Off-note ‘Hunting Party'. Embellishment gets in way of journalist's tale Serbo-Bosnian War tale.

In retrospect, it seems painfully obvious, but I'll say it anyway: What works for lonely heart hit-men and nebbish ad execs in Mexico doesn't necessarily work for war journalists covering genocide in the Balkans.

Tell it to Richard Shepard. After striking a novel balance of gravitas and comic brio in his breakout critical hit “The Matador” (2005), the writer-director fails to replicate the feat in “The Hunting Party,” an ambitious political caper about the hunt for a Serbian war criminal. Playing a pair of on-the-edge journalists, Richard Gere and Terrence Howard act like they just walked into a buddy movie, not the corpse-strewn villages of Eastern Europe.

Based on an Esquire article by Scott K. Anderson and his real-life search for Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic, the movie suffers from reckless embellishment and unbelievable behavior. It begins in 1994, during - in the words of veteran cameraman/narrator Duck (Howard) - “one perfect winter of tragedy.” Confronted by unimaginable human carnage, and the institutional impotence of U.N. peace keepers, Duck's friend and colleague, reporter Simon Hunt (Gere), has a drunken breakdown on live TV. Just as the former Yugoslavia crumbles, so does Simon's once-sterling reputation and career.

Fast-forward to the new millennium. Duck, well-fed and sedated as the personal cameraman for network talking head Franklin Harris (James Brolin), returns to the Balkans to cover international rebuilding efforts. And who should materialize in his hotel room but Simon, silver hair and severe manner speaking to his lost decade of struggle. Ah, but Simon has a proposition - to follow a rock-solid lead into the mountains on the border of Montenegro to hunt down The Fox (Ljubomir Kerekes), a notorious war criminal with a $5 million bounty on his head.

Seduced by the promise of adventure, Duck ambivalently agrees, and brings along Benjamin (Jesse Eisenberg from “The Squid and the Whale”), a network novice and nepotism special. Together, they make for a humorously irregular trio, interviewing oafish, donut-eating U.N. officials, reluctantly playing the role of C.I.A. operatives, and other heightened pseudo-fictions. The problem: this isn't Mexico, and the light tone feels fatally out-of-step with Simon's intermittent, painful revelations of loss.

Shepard's point - or plea - is to draw attention to a war criminal policy in the Balkans that's disingenuous at best, criminal itself at worst. If three bumbling journalists can flush out a wanted mass murderer, why can't the powers-that-be? And so the absurd thrust of the storytelling is meant to mimic the absurd story on the ground. Unfortunately, the two don't perfectly cancel each other out, and the would-be auteur is left with a slight, unappetizing excess of who-knows-what.

‘The Hunting Party'

Stars: Richard Gere, Terrence Howard, Jesse Eisenberg

Behind the scenes: Written and directed by Richard Shepard

Rating: R for strong language, violent content

Running time: 1 hour, 43 minutes

Grade: C