I saw a very different movie

I had this movie on at home while I was doing some work on the laptop and because of this I missed a couple of scenes. The effect of this was that I saw something completely different to what everyone else saw and it was really quite awesome.

Remove the scene where Martin finds Jarrah's body, and the later bit on the balcony where he has the water bottle in his hand. So now what is presented?

There is an ambiguity setup from the very first scene and it is maintained throughout: is Martin really hunting the tiger or is that just a cover for his real assignment, to hunt down and kill Jarrah? Jarrah had made enemies, powerful enemies. Some perhaps motivated enough to have him killed by a professional. Jarrah disappeared into the wilderness believing he was being hunted. Every scene and every line of dialogue fits this scenario perfectly right up until Martin kills the tiger. Martin reacts emotionally to this event and then we see him burning the body of the tiger. The next day we see him empty the ashes into the wind. He empties the ashes from the blue water bottle.

That moment jolted me completely. That was the first I had seen that water bottle (since the family photo). To me it meant this - there was no tiger, Tasmanian devils are not real after all, the tiger we saw on screen was a projection of Martin's pysche protecting him from what he had really done: he had hunted down and killed Jarrah. That was why he had reacted so emotionally. The tiger was Jarrah - a man Martin had never met but a man he had developed a deep connection to, an innocent creature in the wild trying to survive. Powerful stuff indeed.

Then I went back to see what I had missed only to discover that I had got it completely wrong. Wow.

I have to say, I actually prefer the version I saw. It had quite an impact on me.