User reviews

It's too long. That has to be the first thing to say about the film, it's self indulgent. There are too many scenes where nothing or little happens. This would have been so much better as a film one hour and twenty minutes long. However, I watched right to the end which was inconclusive.

Ezekiel is on a mission to get laid. He gazes longingly at straight boys in the loo, at school, at sporting venues. When he finally meets Mano at a skate park it seems that his dream is realised. However, upon the arrival of Mano's relative onto the scene, we know that things are going to go awry.

I didn't find the grooming aspects of the film convincing. Grooming takes experience and sophistication that a young lad wouldn't have. There was a patience shown that was beyond the years of these protagonists.

For those expecting lads and rumpy-pumpy, there isn't any. The age of the actors and the characters they're playing precludes this. For me, the suggestions of illicit liaisons were delicately and appropriately done.

I'm fine with inconclusive endings as I use my imagination to guess what might have happened after. There were several scenarios in my head of what might have come afterwards. I know why it happened like this. Any follow up to the last scene would have been at odds with the subject matter and themes of the film as well as its languid storytelling. The film is about longing, desire and danger, it's not a detective story.

I don't regret having watched this by any means. But it shouldn't have been so long.

I have watched all but one of Berger's films (2015's 'Mariposa'). I really liked 'Plan B' and 'Hawaii' both which count on very good perfomances of their lead actors, specially Manuel Vignau. 'Absent' and 'Taekwondo' are not as good as these I first mentioned, but are okay. 'The Blond One', however, is just a bad one. After watching 'Young Hunter' I now just think that Berger might be becoming self indulgent. His formulas are just becoming too repetitive whereas his actors are becoming less and less charimastic. If you're gonna play a 'thriller-like' take like this one you simply need good acting or else your movie is just gonna feel souless. The writing here is just not very good either. It feems like he had a bunch of shots in his mind but didn't know how to connect them or where to take the history afterwards. Juan Pablo Cestaro looks like he doesn't know what to do with his character. The tension the film tried to build up is artificial.

I kept getting distracted by the main characters huge uni-brow.

Berger usually gets away with hiring so-so actors by engaging with his camera work and its eroticism...which would have been extremely uncomfortable in a movie like this. For that reason, it makes no sense for him to try to tackle this subject with the same resources. Long shots, lifeless actors and open endings do not mix well. He does not get away with artsy shots and beautiful cinematography. Kudos to the editor for managing to tell a story with limited resources.

A subject well managed of something society don't want to see.

The subject make us sick but the movie presents it with all the due respect.

Great photography and environment.

Marco Berger is an excellent filmmaker, but this one is a miss for me. His better work "The Blonde One" is more of my speed. The kid in this film, his unibrow, as someone said before was way too distracting. Also, the pace was so incredibly slow, it took me out of the story at times. And so it goes. The beat goes on.

Unbearably parsimonious, the only thing worth watching is the main characters' great performances, who manage to take the indecisive plot somewhere away from utter uneventfulness. It does depict the ugly reality of teen exploitation, but it fails to deliver relatability.

An Argentine drama. It is about an adolescent who is in the stage of sexual awakening and looking for someone to live those experiences with, but in doing so falls into the wrong hands. Quality. Slightly parsimonious. LGBTQ Winner of the Maguey award at the FICG. The protagonist's performance is spectacular, the gestures of desire are shown in an extraordinary and impeccable way. A fabulous stage and film direction. It's about deception, extortion, sexual desire and awakening, the search for identity. It shows in an assertive and timely manner the little or no interest of parents in their children and the lack of communication in modern times. An interesting exploratory journey. The only problem is that the ending is fully interpretive and cuts off abruptly leaving you with the feeling of wanting more from the movie.

I want my two hours back. Please don't make the same mistake watching this party killer.

This movie is trying to be French and sophisticated, well it might be the case, but this was not my kind of movie.

Two stars for the cute boys.

A closeted gay teen, unwittingly blackmailed with a secretly-recorded sex tape, is pressured into making child pornography as a participant and a recruiter of young boys. "For each kid you bring you'll get around a month of your dad's salary," the blackmailer tells his victim, "It's just a job, you see."

It's an important topic given the enormity of the multi-billion dollar child sex video industry and the lifelong trauma experienced by exploited kids.

"El Cazador," aka "Young Hunter" is not an exposé. Director Marco Berger focuses on one iconic story, that of 15-year-old Ezequiel, caught in a pornographer's trap, and 13-year-old Juan, the target victim who sees in Ezequiel a surrogate for the father he's lost. It's further complicated by Ezequiel's falling for Mono - his first boyfriend, he thinks - but also the dude who set him up.

Ezequiel, played beautifully by Juan Pablo Cestaro, wrestles with his dilemma in silence to a great degree - a confused kid, in over his head, with no one to turn or talk to. Free of explicit sex, the script is heavy with talk of shoot planning, gaming, texting, skating, and parental subterfuge. Meanwhile, Berger's shots are quietly coaxing the audience to identify with Ezequiel's angst, even while he grooms Juan as the filming date nears. The film's open-ended resolution is reminiscent of Japanese cinema, a moment in time for the audience to ponder, no Hollywood ending here.

Berger explores this challenging story with humanity and compassion for its innocent young victims, a cautionary tale for anyone unaware of child porn's workings. With fine direction and smart cinematography, "Young Hunter" is a courageous effort which won the support of Argentina's National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts. Some say the final cut needs a trim. Still, it's well worth watching.

This is the most boring movie I have ever watched. The main protagonist has the same facial expression for the entire duration of the film. I want my 2 hours back. NO LA VEAN ES HORRIBLEEEEEE. 1/10

Do not waste your time. I'm telling you. There's absolutely nothing interesting about this movie. The acting, the plot, the pace. Jesus give me my 1 1/2 hour back.

Upstream much more scientific and cerebral while this movie on the other hand much more real. A really good movie nonetheless. It's impressive to see a kind of violence way deadlier than the bloodiest... anyway well done!

...but this is just boring without a reason, without a cause. It's a short film, fed into a movie. A story what can be exciting, but it's just made boring.

No, art is just not this...

I think many have already spoken of the theme, it's importance, and power within this film, of which I don't believe I need to add. It is one that grabs one in the belly and twists until you need to wretch.

However.

There was not very much in the way of dialogue as it was really often no more than a sentence or two by any of the characters. Yes, there are many films with this kind of emotional heaviness that can and do pull that off, but not this one. It is a technique that within this production becomes very apparent that it was just that... a technique.

What I found tiresome very early in the film was the long drawn out moody stares. It is understood that the characters were under a lot of pressure most of which was unspoken thus the anxiety and emotional burdens must have been terrible. But there comes a point where that element becomes overplayed. Particularly as there was little dialogue except for the constant questions of "are you ok?", "is there something wrong?" or as I mentioned before just an occasional sentence or two of conversation. Then again, followed by and or accompanied by these long, very long, and frequent moody depressive stares into space, or at one's feet or the ground. If they hadn't been so frequent, so long in duration, and so over used I would not have mentioned at all. But it became so ubiquitous that it soon became a joke of sorts. As if to say, "oh, no... here comes another long melcholy moody stare off into the clouds again..."

And then there is the ending.

I won't go into it in specifics as I do not wish to give away a spoiler, but let's just say it is abrupt and rather uneventful. The movie just ends. Considering the length of the film at an hour and forty one minutes, it really leaves one asking, "is that it?"

Considering the theme and subject of the film, the actors and the age of which they represented, and the level of manipulation taking place, this film could really have carried far more weight than it does.

Far more weight.

I understand that because of the subject matter and its emotional impact on people that sometimes that alone can lead to giving kudos to a film and that is understandable. However, I'm not one to rave about a film just because it enters into the taboos of which we do not like to speak and that is all.

After all, it is a film and as such there should be more than just the subject that carries it. Don't misunderstand, I do not lay any of this on the actors at all, as they were terrific. It had everything to do with the directing, the writing perhaps, and direction the story takes. Which is why despite it should receiving a 10 star, I could only give it an eight.

The young actors as I said carried a load with this one because of its subject matter, and they did it very very well. But they needed far more to work with than just being directed to just utter four or five word sentences every so often and then stare off into depressive moodiness every twenty seconds.

The movie title is not "Joven Cazador", it is "El Cazador" (2020) This translates as "The Hunter" (2020) The spanish word for "young" is "joven".