“Only the most ridiculous parts of this story are true,” promises the onscreen title that opens this new film from Richard Shepard, the writer-director of The Matador. That teaser gave me more hope than the knowledge of its creator’s last film, which was a bit of a dud. Alas and alack, The Hunting Party is drawn from the same well, a chunky stew of black comedy, satire, buddy action and melodrama that needed a few more passes through the blender. Like Pierce Brosnan in The Matador, Richard Gere goes slumming as a once-famous TV newsman whose career took a dive when he cracked up on camera during a live report from the Bosnian War. Five years later, he is reunited with his cameraman (Terrence Howard) and persuades him to accompany him on a bizarre scheme to get an interview from the world’s most wanted war criminal, a Bosnian Serb who supervised the rape and murder of thousands of Muslims. The intended object of satire is the failure of the international community to find guys like this, who may be in hiding but aren’t in any place as inaccessible as, oh, let’s say the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan. But Shepard has nothing to say on the subject, leaving us to fill in the substantial blanks with our own theories (are tracking efforts simply that incompetent, or do that powers that be have reasons for not wanting these beasts put on public trial?). The story hits a major speedbump on the road to believability when our heroes are joined by Jess Eisenberg (star of The Squid and the Whale) as a recent Harvard grad who wants to prove to his father, the network VP, that he has the chops to be a hard-boiled reporter. Nothing to endear you to the boss like getting his son shot at, eh? The Hunting Party seems to grind to a halt about 80 minutes through, only to pin us to our seats with a tacked-on epilogue that plays like a test reel for an alternate version of the story. It’s a movie that hasn’t earned the right to be as cynical as it thinks it is.