'HUNTING PARTY' RANGES FAR AND WIDE, BUT COVERS SOME INTERESTING TERRITORY.

Byline: BOB STRAUSS

>FILM CRITIC

We're warned right up front that "only the most ridiculous parts of this story are true." But that doesn't make "The Hunting Party" seem any more convincing. Or less preposterous.

Very loosely based on Scott Anderson's Esquire article, in which he and a couple of war correspondent buddies jauntily set out to track down a Serbian war criminal some years after the hostilities in Bosnia ended, "Hunting Party" certainly has its absurd and enlightening pluses. But it's also kind of a mess that never quite coheres dramatically. Cynical black comedy, life-threatening terror and moral outrage can be blended into a satisfying whole and have been before.

But writer-director Richard Shepard ("The Matador") just doesn't get the mix right.

The movie is never less than interesting, though, with well-acted characters, over-familiar though most of them are. It's also too complicated and meandering for its own good. Of course, every criticism I've made so far can be used to describe the recent Balkan tragedy, so I guess it's OK to forgive some of the film's weaknesses as matching form to subject.

Things start off rascally enough with a montage of hotshot TV journalist Simon Hunt (Richard Gere) and his more reserved cameraman Duck (Terrence Howard) having a high old time reporting from 1990s combat zones across the globe. Duck, who's narrating, notes how he always seemed to draw more fire than thrill junkie Hunt. He also explains how his colleague's career imploded after he lost it during a live feed from the site of a Bosnian atrocity. Following that, Hunt dropped out of sight and Duck returned stateside to less-dangerous work.

Duck comes back to Sarajevo for the the fifth anniversary of the cease-fire, though. And Hunt -- disheveled, emotionally unstable, broke but still highly calculating -- reappears and manages to talk his old friend into joining a seeming wild goose chase to capture The Fox (Ljubomir Kerekes), a former leader of Serb death squads whom the peacekeeping authorities are afraid to go after. With Benjamin, a network executive's kid played by "The Squid and the Whale's" Jesse Eisenberg, in tow, the team heads into very scary rural territory to find their elusive prey and either bring him to justice or bring back a great story. Or both. If they survive.

Of course, nothing Hunt says is reliable, although his passion certainly seems genuine enough. If Gere hadn't played a smarter, less sentimental scam artist in "The Hoax" earlier this year, this quite good performance may have seemed more impressive. Eisenberg is excellent as a nervous naive kid, in way over his head, who has enough wits to rise to the occasion when necessary. Howard anchors the proceedings with the only display of good sense, however much it gets compromised, on screen.

Shepard plays with some great ideas, like the fact that every local person and international representative is completely convinced that the American reporters are CIA agents.

Shot in shell-scarred Sarajevo and over the border in Croatia, "The Hunting Party" looks chillingly authentic. But it also feels too much like it's all over the map.

Bob Strauss [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

THE HUNTING PARTY - Two and one half stars

>R: violence, nudity, sex, drug use, language, ethnic prejudice.

>Starring: Richard Gere, Terrence Howard, Jesse Eisenberg, Ljubomir Kerekes.

>Director: Richard Shepard.

>Running time: 1 hr. 43 min.

>Playing: Area wide.

>In a nutshell: A couple of journalists try to catch a Bosnian war criminal in this odd, smart, tonally confused comic thriller.

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Richard Gere, left, and Terrence Howard star as a TV journalist and a cameraman looking for a war criminal in "The Hunting Party."