Death Hunt
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Death Hunt is a 1981 film starring Charles Bronson, Lee Marvin, Tantoo Cardinal, Angie Dickinson, Carl Weathers, Maury Chaykin, Ed Lauter and Andrew Stevens. The film was directed by Peter Hunt, and was a fictionalized account of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police pursuit of a man named Albert Johnson.
[edit] Plot summary
At the beginning of the film, a sullen loner named Albert Johnson (Bronson) arrives in the Canadian Yukon of the 1930s. At about the same time, a young Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officer named Alvin Adams (Stevens) arrives at his new post in the Yukon. Bringing with him a new two way radio, Adams joins the veteran Sgt. Edgar Millen (Marvin) and George Washington Lincoln Brown (Weathers).
Right after arriving, Johnson gets on the wrong side of a gang of bullies when he draws his gun on them to prevent them from killing a white German Shepherd dog for losing a dogfight. He forces the ringleader to sell the dog for $200, and takes the dog back to his cabin, where he nurses the dog back to health. After Millen refuses to arrest Johnson for this, the bullies take matters into their own hands, and try to ambush Johnson at his home. After they kill the dog Johnson kills one of the bullies in self defense.
Millen and a posse try to arrest Johnson at his home, and Millen offers to guarantee his safety while they go back into town and sort the matter out. One of the bullies sees a chance to kill Johnson while Millen is talking, and takes a shot at Johnson, which ends any chance of the standoff being resolved peacefully. Millen and the posse destroy Johnson's cabin, but Johnson survives to escape. Millen and the other RCMP officers begin a long pursuit of Johnson across frozen northwestern Canada. Millen tries to capture Johnson. After rewards totaling $1,000 Canadian are posted for the capture of Johnson, a large number of men take off in pursuit. By now most of Canada is aware of the situation in the Yukon, and Royal Canadian Air Force Captain Hank Turner soon arrives to help in the pursuit. He reveals that Johnson was a member of the United States military as a member of American special intelligence during World War I. While flying, Turner thinks he sees Johnson, and fires wildly at the posse, hitting and killing Brown in the process. The other members of the posse return fire, causing Turner to crash into a mountain.
Johnson is subsequently allowed to escape into Alaska. Millen and Adams claim that another man they were forced to shoot was Albert Johnson.
[edit] Differences Between the Movie and Actual Pursuit
Lee Marvin plays a RCMP Sgt Millen who in the movie kills a man and claims the man to be Albert Johnson, and who then lets Johnson escape into Alaska. There was a real RCMP Constable Millen involved in the hunt for Johnson - however he was murdered by Johnson. The real Albert Johnson was killed after a remarkable and highly-publicized pursuit of several weeks. Of especial note was the fact that Johnson eluded his RCMP pursuers in the dead of winter in the lower Arctic, crossing the Richardson Mountains in the process, a feat previously considered impossible by many in the Arctic. The real life Johnson was finally surrounded by Mounties on the frozen Eagle River and shot and killed on February 17, 1932.
World War I veteran Wop May was a bush pilot who was involved in the hunt for Johnson. Contrary to the movie, May-represented as "Captain Tucker"-did not wildly shoot at everyone - including the posse on the ground. He also did not crash and die on a mountaintop after being shot down by the posse, surviving until 1952.
In the movie, it was claimed that Johnson was a veteran of the first World War, with Captain Tucker providing Johnson's military service record to Millen and the other RCMP officers. In reality, virtually nothing was known of Albert Johnson before his arrival on Fort McPherson on July 9, 1931
