Hunter’s helm sharpens his Netflix spear
Mandla Dube brings slick, stylish action to streaming screens in his welcome shift from fact to fiction.
Wilfred Okiche
Preparation meets opportunity in Heart of the Hunter, the latest spectacle by South African filmmaker Mandlakayise Walter Dube.
In 2016, Dube demonstrated a capacity for tackling scale in his storytelling with the biopic Kalushi. His 2022 Netflix action flick Silverton Siege took creative licence to reimagine a little-known sociopolitical event of 1980s South Africa.
In a change of pace, Heart of the Hunter operates completely in the realm of fiction, although one that borrows buzzwords like state capture from real-world discourse.
Adapted from Deon Meyer’s popular 2003 novel of the same title (Proteus in Afrikaans), and supported by the immense purse strings of Netflix, where Dube is signed to a production deal, Heart of the Hunter is visually appealing and works as a finely executed exercise in genre filmmaking. The stunning vistas of the Western Cape region are the pictureperfect background for this tale of politics, patriotism, espionage and retribution.
Zuko Khumalo (Bonko Khoza) thinks he’s done with working in the shadows as a black-ops hitman. He wants to start a family with a young woman, Malime (Masasa Mbangeni), and her little boy Pakamile (Boleng Mogotsi) who both adore him. This attempt at domestic bliss is cut short when a figure from the past shows up at his doorstep, precipitating our hero’s return to the killing fields, doing what he does best.
Unlike Silverton Siege, Heart of the Hunter is not bogged down by historical anchors, and any politics that make an appearance are mostly background noise, leaving Dube able and willing to zero in on the conventions of the genre to deliver a sleek, stylish action thriller.