The Hunted (Full Screen Edition)The Hunted (Full Screen Edition)
STORY OF A RETIRED INSTRUCTOR OF WARFARE WHO MUST BATTLE HIS FORMER TOP STUDENT, A TOP SPECIAL FORCES ASSASSIN GONE RENEGADE.William Friedkin’s taut direction highlights The Hunted, a bloodsport thriller that works best without dialogue. It’s a prime vehicle for costars Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro, whose rugged screen personas are perfectly matched in a manhunt between a military assassin and the man who trained him to kill. Traumatized by atrocities in Kosovo four years earlier (the si
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(out of 148 reviews)
Review by The Doctor for The Hunted (Full Screen Edition)
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“The Hunted” is a fantastically gritty, pulse-pounding chase film with refreshing realism, and is a fine return to form for the occasionally brilliant Friedkin, who has not been this on top of things since “To Live and Die in L.A.” I will not here attempt to offer a synopsis of the film, as that has been done to death in this forum, but will instead offer some commentary.
First, those complaining that this film does not really have much of a plot, or that the plot of this film is confusing and messy, have entirely missed the point. William Friedkin was not here trying to make a story-driven film, at all. As for the second complaint, Friedkin has stated that he purposefully wanted much of the film to remain ambiguous. The viewer, for instance IS NOT SUPPOSED TO KNOW whether the del Toro character is crazy or not. Those complaining that they can’t figure out whether he’s right in his suspicions or not have entirely missed the point of the film. Friedkin here was trying to develop an intense, gritty, extended, mano-y-mano conflict between two men who are clearly more dangerous than anyone else in their environment. Jones’ character, fearing he’s found himself in a Dr. Frankensteinian scenario, having created a monster only he can stop, feels both responsible to bring in del Toro and guilty for hunting a man he essentially feels fatherly towards. Jones’ character could train del Toro’s to kill, but, after having done so, he is unable (or unwilling) to help him psychologically. This is insufficient training, an insufficient initiation into manhood, resulting in the playing out of the Abraham/Isaac mythos. Unsophisticated viewers insisting on a “good guy”/”bad guy” take on the film will likely not enjoy this movie. Jones’ character is not the “good guy” and del Toro’s is not the “bad guy”; they are just both tormented men. Some viewers have interpreted Jones’ character as the good guy, but just as many will see del Toro’s character as a good guy being hunted down by his own government which he has just finished serving. This ambiguity of not having a clear cut “good guy” and “bad guy” is exactly what Friedkin was going for. Life is not black and white. In fact such Hollywoodian portrayals are naive and absurd.
Those complaining that Jones’ character is unrealistic should watch the film with the commentary turned on, and learn about the real man that Jones’ character is based on. Was it unrealistic that the two characters quickly fashioned knives out of raw materials in the wilderness? …Not when the actors were trained to be able to do such themselves in real life.
What “The Hunted” has to offer the viewer is an absolutely enthralling action film harkening back to the grittier days of action movies (such as The French Connection or Bullitt). The main character is fascinating to watch. He’s full of nervous energy that he is constantly shaking out. He can’t stay still; he’s twitchy. Something is clearly bothering him. He knows how utterly dangerous his adversary is, and feels responsible for teaching him the destructive maneuvers he knows. The army trains men to be cold-blooded killers. This changes some men. It’s a door you can’t walk back through. The army does not train them to reenter society. That’s left to them, and not all of them can effectively pull it off. Benecio del Toro’s character thinks the government is stalking him, spying on him. We don’t know if this is true or if he’s merely snapped. What we do know is that he is an extraordinarily dangerous man who is out on the loose.
Martial arts fans should take special note: this movie has the absolute best and most realistic hand-to-hand fight scenes this critic has ever scene (I say this having studied many martial arts in real life). The art on display is Kali knife fighting. Both Tommy Lee Jones and Benecio del Toro trained in the art and did the fighting in the film. It shows. (Allegedly Jones broke del Toro’s wrist in one of their fights!) These are the most gritty and breathtaking fight scenes you’ll ever see (the first of which I would pick as the best fight scene in film history). They are utterly realistic, and look very much the way a real martial arts fight looks (i.e. brutal and short). No nonsense wires or high-flying kicks here, just deadly street fighting.
The tracking scenes in this film are wonderful, relishing the details. The cinematography is downright breathtaking, and the soundtrack is one of the greatest and most effective in years. Friedkin makes the viewer feel that even after the antagonist is brought into the city that he’s still in a wilderness…a wilderness of concrete blocks instead of trees and moss. Once the chase is on, it doesn’t stop until the end of this wonderfully fun movie. Ignore the negative reviews and check this one out!
Review by Barron Laycock for The Hunted (Full Screen Edition)
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From the first frames of this interesting and somewhat offbeat movie, I found myself fascinated by the setting in the snow-graced forests of the Pacific northwest, where retired government martial-arts and assassin training expert Tommy Lee Jones walks with both grace and purpose through the winter splendor of the chilly landscape. However unlikely the action as depicted in the scenes, it was a marvelous set of opening scenes, providing a key insight into the lead character’s humanity and perspective. Little would I know that this was perhaps the most satisfying aspect of this taut suspense thriller. Lee is soon whisked away almost involuntarily to help solve a pair of horrific murders of seasoned and well-armed hunters in the area, only to discover the assailant was one of the expert assassins he helped train. From there the mystery begins to deepen, and Lee finds himself locked into a death struggle on a number of levels both with the assassin, played well by the charismatic Benico Del Toro. Del Toro’s character is haunted by memories of atrocities he witnessed in Kosovo, and his former government handlers are trying to convince Lee that Del Toro has simply gone renegade. Yet there are signs that there may be some truth to Del Toro’s suspicions, as told to Lee indicating that he had been set up, that the hunters he executed in the forest were in fact government assassins come to terminate him. The viewer is taken on a whirlwind ride through forest, suburb, and through a variety of cityscapes, and a few of the chase scenes are entertaining, amusing, and quite ingenuous. The plot sometimes suffers from more bullet holes than any of Del Toro’s victims, but if you can suspend your critical faculties enough to enjoy the fireworks, you will likely enjoy this potboiler effort at government intrigue gone horribly wrong. Enjoy!
Review by Z.W. Lawson for The Hunted (Full Screen Edition)
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The Hunted is not based on a very original idea, but it is executed in a unique manner. Some people might think it looks like the third “Fugitive” movie, and the idea is similar–Tommy Lee Jones has to chase down and catch Benicio Del Toro, but unlike Harrison Ford and Wesley Snipes, Del Toro is actually guilty of murder. Jones plays “LT,” the man who trained Hallam (Del Toro) to kill for the government. This is why he is the one to track Hallam, because he taught him. This element makes Jones’ role much more believable. This movie is full of violence, none of it overdone, but every act of violence is shown onscreen, and not much is left to the imagination. The hunt for Hallam is intense, and the skill with which Hallam continuously evades his hunters is intriguing. This movie is well worth watching, because both Jones and Del Toro offer terrific performances.
Review by for The Hunted (Full Screen Edition)
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That’s what they should have titled this movie. If you’re going to redo the plot of a movie like First Blood, at least remember the plot part of it. How Del Toro extracts his “friend of the animals” mindset from Kosovo killing nightmares is never explained. Why hunters are out hunting Del Toro instead of Bambi is never explained. Why Ms. FBI is in shoot-first-question-later mode is never explained. Some mysterious mission is mentioned in the paddy-wagon right before Del Toro kills his captors but is never mentioned again.The chase/tracking scenes, wilderness, and fights are neat but that’s about it. The continuity leaves a little to be desired though. I mean, they’re in the river, they’re in some broken down mill-type building, all of a sudden Jones is in the woods again, he trips a miniscule wire and the twin tree-trunk crushing trap from Return of the Jedi is sprung. There was no scene of Del Toro or even the Ewoks that must have helped him lift the 500lb tree trunks into the air.And then it ends. Thanks. I want my money back.
Review by Craig Chalquist, PhD, author of TERRAPSYCHOLOGY and DEEP CALIFORNIA for The Hunted (Full Screen Edition)
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Other reviewers have already commented on action, plot, etc., so I would like to take this into realms psychological.
First of all, this film is a wonderful demonstration of a thesis basic to depth psychology: those mythic stories we fail to take account of when they address us get lived out unconsciously. “Mythic” in the sense of a primordial tale, not an archaic explanation. The primordial tale addressing these two men is that of Abraham and his son Isaac. The narrative voice at the start of the film lets us know that: “And God said, Abraham, kill me a son.” This, then, is the given, the symbolic framework in which the older tracker/weapons master and the young soldier must operate.
Then comes the personal. L. T. (Tommy Lee Jones) learned how to track, hunt, survive, and kill from his own father. He taught those skills to Aaron, but they were not enough. Overloaded with the stresses of war’s insanity, Aaron writes to L. T. for help, but the older man does not know what to do, how to help (perhaps because his own father did not).
There are many traditions and myths describing how the older men initiate the younger ones into adulthood. This film depicts a failed initiation: the dilemma of an elder who ought to be a mentor but, never having been mentored himself, cannot give the male blessing to the younger man who needs it so badly. Because of this, both have little choice but to live out the story of Abraham and Isaac in its most destructive implications.