The Hunted Review
by Robin Clifford (robin AT reelingreviews DOT com)March 20th, 2003
"The Hunted"
Special Ops Sergeant Aaron Hallam (Benicio Del Toro) has been to hell and back. His last assignment in Kosovo thrust the horror of "ethnic cleansing" in his face and he disappeared not long after. Now, several years later, a number of hunters in the Pacific Northwest have met with untimely ends, gutted and trussed like game meat. The FBI is on the case searching for prime suspect Hallam, but L.T. Bonham (Tommy Lee Jones), Aaron's trainer in the deadly arts, is called in to help find "The Hunted."
A voiceover announces, "Abraham, slay me a son" as God instructs his prophet to murder his own flesh and blood. The film switches to an eerie nighttime setting in Kosovo as the shadowy team of American Special Ops soldiers invisibly work their way through a burning city as Serbian forces gun down innocent men, women and children without so much as a blink of an eye. The horror is too much for Sgt. Hallam and he soon disappears after being awarded the Silver Star for his clandestine involvement in central Europe.
L.T. Bonham runs through the snowy woods in pursuit of a bleeding and limping white wolf. He catches his prey and gently removes an illegal snare from around the poor creatures bloody leg. Next, we are transported to a rainy forest in the Pacific Northwest as two "hunters" sporting rifles with powerful, unconventional high tech scopes track down their quarry. Although heavily armed, the two men are dispatched by a camouflaged figure with a knife. The FBI are already on the scene when Bonham arrives and he has them stand down while he heads into the forest, alone, to find Aaron Hallam.
The ex-Special Ops soldier is taken into custody for the string of murders of the hunters (who may have been CIA operatives), but Bonham trained his ward too well and Hallam escapes into the city of Portland, Oregon. The forces of the FBI, state and local police are called into the manhunt but it is up to Bonham to bring in his boy.
As "The Hunted" begins to unfold, I was struck with the thought that I've seen this before.
What comes to mind is the 1982 Sylvester Stallone thriller "First Blood" - the tale of a troubled Vietnam vet who, in a battle of wills with a bastard of a town sheriff in the Pacific Northwest, starts a one man war with society. Before the body count starts to build, there arrives Col. Samuel Traughtman (Richard Crenna), the man who trained Rambo and who must bring his wayward student in from the cold. That, in a nutshell, is what "The Hunted" is like, with the focus on Bonham instead of renegade Hallam, except this William Friedkin film is not nearly as good as the first Rambo film.
With "The Hunted" we have trouble vet Aaron Hallam hiding out in the woods of the Pacific Northwest in a one-man war against government hunters sent to kill him, then the FBI and, finally, with Bonham. The opening voiceover, though, sets the stage, making the ending more predictable and less meaningful than "First Blood." Helmer Friedkin moves his new actioner along at a brisk pace but the original screenplay, by David & Peter Griffiths and Art Monterastelli, is a shallow rendition of a better story.
The story for "The Hunted" is reportedly based upon the experiences of the film's technical consultant, Thomas Brown, who runs a tracker school like the one depicted in flashback. This may be true but the more than passing resemblance to "First Blood" cannot be overlooked. It feels like the writers played the '82 film in a loop until they were inspired to create "The Hunted" screenplay. There are also elements of the extended cat and mouse chase between Bonham and Hallam that ring extraordinarily untrue. Knives are an important element of the action, but when Aaron forges a blade with some kindling and a couple pieces of iron and L.T. chips a knife out of stone (in what feels like only minutes of film time) it strains credulity. Even worse is a trap that Hallam springs on Bonham, at one point during the chase, which would have taken four guys all day to set up. Aaron, apparently, is able to whip it up in a few moments.
The acting is pretty perfunctory but TLJ does his best to avoid the cliché of this US marshal role in "The Fugitive" film duo and plays L.T. Bohnam as a man that has turned his back on the trade that made troubled Aaron into the killing machine he must ultimately confront. L.T. is a man who lives to be out of doors and is uncomfortable being inside normal buildings. I also have to give 55-year old Jones credit for the sheer physical effort playing Aaron's learned master and final opponent. Benicio Del Toro is not given nearly enough on screen time and when he is on camera he doesn't have a lot to do to build his character. Early on he is shown, in a scene that smacks of the insanity of Col. Kurtz in "Apocalypse Now," in a mixture of shadow and light that is to explain why he wigged out and ran away. After that, the Oscar-winning actor is pretty two-dimensional.
Third billed Connie Nielsen, as chief FBI investigator Abby Durrell, is relegated to the background with the rest of the non-descript supporting cast. She should have had been given more to do, a la Brian Dennehy in "First Blood," but is left completely out of the film's central action. Leslie Stefanson, as a quasi-romantic interest for Hallam, is part of a tacked on sub-plot that adds to the film time but the interlude is nothing more than an unnecessary distraction. The rest of the cast is fodder for Aaron's knife - a considerable character in its own right.
Techs are in the very good range and are far better than the script deserves. Of course, with the great Caleb Deschanel behind the camera we can expect that the lensing will be of outstanding quality - and it certainly is here. The lush landscape of the rain forests is handled with a crispness and clarity that almost hurts the eyes. This is balanced nicely with the fast action of the city scenes as L.T. chases Aaron through Portland and into the river basin for the finale.
There was probably a good movie left on the cutting room floor of "The Hunted" and I wish I could see it. I was disappointed with what we get and give it a C+.
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