The Hunted Movie Review:


The Hunted-Movie Review-Paramount-3 Stars

A long time ago man made sharp weapons out of rocks. He also learned how to make deadly knives using fire and metal.

Why am I telling you all this. Because in the action thriller The Hunted, the expert teacher of government assassins L.T. Bonham (Tommy Lee Jones) goes head to head with his most able graduate Aaron Hallam (Benicio Del Toro) using such an arsenal.

It seems that Aaron has gone over the edge after too many overseas assignments where not just the bad guys got killed but also many innocent civilians. There is no good or clear explanation as to why Aaron has snapped mentally and turned into this monster.Now back in U.S., he kills civilians starting with two hunters and moving into slaughtering police officers and FBI agents. The only man who can stop him is Bonham, the one who trained Aaron to be such a lethal weapon.

He can disappear right in front of you. Aaron can also murder you in many different ways and quickly too. He can also adapt to any environment and make weapons from almost any material.

Bonham on the other hand is a retired government contractor that never had to use his super duper skills on anyone in a real combat situation. Now he must see if he has got what it takes to catch and stop his top student who has seen lots of action and is very good at killing people.

His great tracking skills enable him to find Aaron pretty fast where the FBI and other government agencies seem too dumb to decipher the simplest of clues.

The Hunted has some gripping suspense but suffers from redundant sequences of Aaron, over and over again, in similar variations of being chased, then found, arrested and then escaping again and again and again.

Each time Bonham finds him there is hand to hand fighting with sharp objects that get more and more gory while also increasing the sadistic nature of the action.

Some of the dialogue is badly written and there are plenty of scenes that are not convincing or necessary.It is basically a chase movie that borrows from Rambo and the Fugitive while offering nothing really new to the genre. The story seems to lose its compass early on without being able to redeem itself in the least bit.

With a bit of good suspense, the Hunted gives just a whiff of satisfaction to most die-hard action fans that is very short lived and disappointing.

Gil Benzeevi

The Hunted opens with a voice over by Johnny Cash, telling the tale of Abraham and Isaac. The significance of this is not truly discovered until the last frame, with the closing voiceover, and even then it is a theme too subtle and buried beneath the battles to be truly affective. We may see the connection between Abraham being willing to kill his own son, by the knife, but it never truly becomes a part of the story. Though, perhaps not as deep as it could have been, The Hunted is still an intelligent and extremely intense thriller.
Tommy Lee Jones plays L.T. Bonham, a former U.S, army employee. In something of a memory sequence we see Bonham training an elite group of soldiers to kill with incredible accuracy. One of these students is Aaron Hallam, the reason that Bonham has been called back. After a brutal experience in Kosovo, Hallam has not been quite the same. To say that he has gone insane would not be a fair statement because the film never allows enough information for the audience to have a sure answer. Instead hunted chooses to focus on the chase, which director William Friedkin has been famous for ever since The French Connection, and To Live and Die in L.A.
There are other elements in the plot, but they are not more than a background to the chasing and fighting of the two main characters. Jones thrives in this quiet character, who spends a large majority of the film struggling to keep up with his younger counterpart. The first time we see Bonham he is tracking a wounded wolf in order to set it free from a trap it has stepped into. This seems to be a strong metaphor for the relationship between Bonham and Hallam, which is somewhat confusing considering a metaphor was already delivered by Cash in the opening voiceover.
Friedkin lets us know very early on that this is not going to be an easy film to watch. Many of the scenes are so suspenseful, so intense, and in some cases, so violent, it’s difficult not to look away. Fights in Hunted are done so realistically that it is apparent how much dedicated training it must have taken for Del Toro, and Jones. The fighting was so realistic, at one point during filming it resulted in Del Toro breaking his wrist. This isn’t surprising considering Friedkin’s past treatment of actors. During the filming of The Exorcist he is said to have pushed his actors to the point of injury as well.
The Hunted does not need to resort to fancy camera work in order to make the actors appear more skilled than they actually are, but instead stays with them increasing the tension in each scene. As intense as Hunted is though, it never quite reaches the next level intellectually. Despite its flaws, The Hunted is anything but boring, or generic.

Ryan Izay

The Hunted is a lackluster chase thriller that's fight sequences are extravagant, but everything else in the film is pretty dull. The story centers on two men that are opposite in their actions, but similar in their nature. L.T. Bonham (Jones) is a retired military trainer, who once taught young men to survive in hostile situations with just a knife. Whether in combat situations or top missions, L.T. trainee's where the best. "The people that he has killed didn't even know that he was in the same room with them," L.T. explains of his protégé Aaron Hallam (Del Toro). Hallman's battle-stress has recently pushed him over the edge and his now killing innocent people that he believes are out to get him. In Oregon, Hallman has recently killed a couple of hunters with his knife in a ritualistic fashion. The authorities quickly notify L.T., who comes out of retirement when he sees that the pictures of the dead hunters reflect the actions of one of his own. The film then turns into a violent chase movie with L.T. trying more to understand Hallam, than trying to kill him. The two characters are in a couple of intriguing hand-to-hand combat battles, which are the best moments of the film. However, the story is predictable and the chase sequences run so long that script is put on the back burner.

Director William Friedkin is one of the best in the business at filming chase sequences; remember the classic car chase with Gene Hackman in The French Connection (1971). With The Hunted, it seems that the characters are introduced and then they chase each other for the rest of the film. I found the chase sequences being too long, too easy, and taking away critical time towards the plot. There is one sequence that has to last about half an hour, then it stops, then the characters utter a few lines, then another chase sequence begins. Of course during the film's final chase sequence, L.T. and Hallam have time to stop and build a knife for the final showdown. Moments like this are what brings this film down, when The Hunted could have really be interesting. The Hunted is more or less a retelling of First Blood (1982) with Tommy Lee Jones once again chasing another fellow actor. Friedkin is a very good director, but I found some of his work in The Hunted to be repetitive and overdone.

The script by David Griffiths, Peter Griffiths, and Art Monterastelli has a lot of problems as well. The two male characters are developed well, in which the opening sequence in Kosovo with Hallam gives a good sense as to why he snapped. However, the two supporting females in the story really just show up with no depth at all. Connie Nielsen's Abby is a proficient FBI agent that hints at past incidents resulting in her killing someone, but it is left at that. Leslie Stefanson's Irene shows up as Hallam's girlfriend, but after Hallam and L.T. leave her presence for a chase scene, she never resurfaces. There are many things that are left open in the writing, which might have been intentional. The fight and chase scenes also don't have the two lead characters holding a conversation or making wise cracks why they battle like most action films, which is an aspect I did like. The overall script was also really short; another ten to fifteen pages could have gave the story some more depth.

Benicio Del Toro has as striking a persona as you can find in an actor. If you want to see really great acting by him, rent Traffic (2000). As the battle stressed Hallam, Del Toro captures and holds the screen, but he couldn't save the film himself. Tommy Lee Jones, who plays L.T., once again chases a fugitive many times in a role that we have all seen from him before. Jones is a very talented actor, but I believe that he should take a break from the chase movies and go back to the roles like he had in Cobb (1994) or Heaven & Earth (1993), where his skills are really shown. Connie Nielsen plays the hard-nosed FBI agent Abby, in which she does what she can with a role that doesn't offer much.

The one-on-one (Del Toro vs. Jones) fight scenes are enjoyable and also admirable. Other than that, The Hunted is a constant chase film that lacks clarity and depth.

Report Card Grade: C-

03/17/03

Joseph Tucker

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