Opens Friday, March 14
"The Hunted" is about as basic as a chase movie gets. Tommy Lee Jones, a retired teacher in survival and assassination techniques, is called in to hunt down Benicio Del Toro, a former pupil gone bad. Jones hunts Del Toro down. Government operatives let him escape. So Jones hunts Del Toro again and the two fight to the finish. By stripping an action thriller this close to the bone, director William Friedkin has removed too much meat. Because these two guys intrigue an audience, especially given the relative nature of good and evil in their mano a mano conflict, one feels cheated by the movie's relentless drive to oversimplify the narrative. The urge is strong to cry out: Where's the rest of the movie?
The film's bloody action includes enough knife fights and suspenseful tracking sequences to hold its mostly male target audience. Del Toro should create female interest in the movie as well, so Paramount can expect above-average results. But they missed out on a classic thriller when Friedkin and writers David and Peter Griffiths and Art Monterastelli decided to cut to the chase and leave the potential for thematic complexity to the audience's imagination.
In a sense, this is a bold movie. Friedkin wants us to read volumes into the film's silences, into the men's physical movements and eye contact with each other. But in an action movie, this is asking too much even of actors this talented. We sense their connection but have no idea how they feel about each other.
In long-ago training sessions, Jones' L.T. Bonham turned Del Toro's Aaron Hallam into a killing machine. Yet L.T. has never harmed a fly. Hallam has killed so many at the behest of the U.S. government that he has lost all sense of moral control. Each gets an opening "credentials" sequence: In 1999, Hallam slips into the nighttime chaos of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and without being seen or heard swiftly kills a murderous Serb officer. In the British Columbia wilderness, L.T. tracks down and gently heals a wolf wounded by a hunter's snare.
Four years later, Hallam is stalking and butchering hunters in the Oregon forest. The FBI calls in his teacher to track him down. Does L.T. feel any guilt? Does Hallam? Might not L.T. empathize with Hallam to the point he really doesn't want to kill him? Why is he so willing to kill a pupil for a government that has exploited them both?
Their brief, tenuous scenes together fail to answer any of these and so many more questions. A young woman (Leslie Stefanson) and her child are part of Hallam's world, but how they are involved is anybody's guess. A glimmer of a relationship develops between L.T. and an FBI agent (Connie Nielsen), but the movie has no time for that. What it does have time for are absurdities.
Hallam escapes from gray-suited government operatives in Portland. The city, L.T. remarks earlier, is a wilderness, and the movie means to prove his point. As if he were back in British Columbia, L.T. tracks Hallam through the city's tunnels, artificial waterfalls and riverway -- much of this implausible, to say the least. An elaborate sequence on the Interstate Bridge, where Hallam is exposed to SWAT sharpshooters for minutes but emerges unharmed, stretches things even further. But the final absurdity comes when the two men stop their hunt to give us a primer in turning urban debris into flint and steel weapons. OK, Hallam must do so since he has no weapon. But can't L.T. just grab a good hunting knife?
Their one-on-one fight is well-choreographed and contains visceral tension. This is a far cry from the martial arts follies in most action movies. But the stakes aren't high enough. Instead of two guys struggling to kill each other, we should sense their ambivalence. Truffaut once said Hitchcock filmed his murder scenes like love scenes. That should be the case here.
Fine location work by a superb crew -- cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, production designer William Cruse and costume designer Gloria Gresham -- adds compelling elements to the chase. Augie Hess' razor-sharp editing lets the movie flow gracefully.
THE HUNTED
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures in association with Lakeshore Entertainment a Ricardo Mestres/Alphaville production
Credits:
Director: William Friedkin
Screenwriters: David Griffiths, Peter Griffiths, Art Monterastelli
Producers: Ricardo Mestres, James Jacks
Executive producers: David Griffiths, Peter Griffiths, Marcus Viscadi, Sean Daniel
Director of photography: Caleb Deschanel
Production designer: William Cruse
Music: Brian Tyler
Co-producer: Art Montersatelli
Costume designer: Gloria Gresham
Editor: Augie Hess
Cast:
L.T. Bonham: Tommy Lee Jones
Aaron Hallam: Benicio Del Toro
Abby: Connie Nielsen, Irene: Leslie Stefanson
Ted: John Finn
Moret: Jose Zuniga
Van Zandt: Ron Canada
Dale Hewitt: Mark Pellegrino
Running time -- 94 minutes
MPAA rating R...
"The Hunted" is about as basic as a chase movie gets. Tommy Lee Jones, a retired teacher in survival and assassination techniques, is called in to hunt down Benicio Del Toro, a former pupil gone bad. Jones hunts Del Toro down. Government operatives let him escape. So Jones hunts Del Toro again and the two fight to the finish. By stripping an action thriller this close to the bone, director William Friedkin has removed too much meat. Because these two guys intrigue an audience, especially given the relative nature of good and evil in their mano a mano conflict, one feels cheated by the movie's relentless drive to oversimplify the narrative. The urge is strong to cry out: Where's the rest of the movie?
The film's bloody action includes enough knife fights and suspenseful tracking sequences to hold its mostly male target audience. Del Toro should create female interest in the movie as well, so Paramount can expect above-average results. But they missed out on a classic thriller when Friedkin and writers David and Peter Griffiths and Art Monterastelli decided to cut to the chase and leave the potential for thematic complexity to the audience's imagination.
In a sense, this is a bold movie. Friedkin wants us to read volumes into the film's silences, into the men's physical movements and eye contact with each other. But in an action movie, this is asking too much even of actors this talented. We sense their connection but have no idea how they feel about each other.
In long-ago training sessions, Jones' L.T. Bonham turned Del Toro's Aaron Hallam into a killing machine. Yet L.T. has never harmed a fly. Hallam has killed so many at the behest of the U.S. government that he has lost all sense of moral control. Each gets an opening "credentials" sequence: In 1999, Hallam slips into the nighttime chaos of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and without being seen or heard swiftly kills a murderous Serb officer. In the British Columbia wilderness, L.T. tracks down and gently heals a wolf wounded by a hunter's snare.
Four years later, Hallam is stalking and butchering hunters in the Oregon forest. The FBI calls in his teacher to track him down. Does L.T. feel any guilt? Does Hallam? Might not L.T. empathize with Hallam to the point he really doesn't want to kill him? Why is he so willing to kill a pupil for a government that has exploited them both?
Their brief, tenuous scenes together fail to answer any of these and so many more questions. A young woman (Leslie Stefanson) and her child are part of Hallam's world, but how they are involved is anybody's guess. A glimmer of a relationship develops between L.T. and an FBI agent (Connie Nielsen), but the movie has no time for that. What it does have time for are absurdities.
Hallam escapes from gray-suited government operatives in Portland. The city, L.T. remarks earlier, is a wilderness, and the movie means to prove his point. As if he were back in British Columbia, L.T. tracks Hallam through the city's tunnels, artificial waterfalls and riverway -- much of this implausible, to say the least. An elaborate sequence on the Interstate Bridge, where Hallam is exposed to SWAT sharpshooters for minutes but emerges unharmed, stretches things even further. But the final absurdity comes when the two men stop their hunt to give us a primer in turning urban debris into flint and steel weapons. OK, Hallam must do so since he has no weapon. But can't L.T. just grab a good hunting knife?
Their one-on-one fight is well-choreographed and contains visceral tension. This is a far cry from the martial arts follies in most action movies. But the stakes aren't high enough. Instead of two guys struggling to kill each other, we should sense their ambivalence. Truffaut once said Hitchcock filmed his murder scenes like love scenes. That should be the case here.
Fine location work by a superb crew -- cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, production designer William Cruse and costume designer Gloria Gresham -- adds compelling elements to the chase. Augie Hess' razor-sharp editing lets the movie flow gracefully.
THE HUNTED
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures in association with Lakeshore Entertainment a Ricardo Mestres/Alphaville production
Credits:
Director: William Friedkin
Screenwriters: David Griffiths, Peter Griffiths, Art Monterastelli
Producers: Ricardo Mestres, James Jacks
Executive producers: David Griffiths, Peter Griffiths, Marcus Viscadi, Sean Daniel
Director of photography: Caleb Deschanel
Production designer: William Cruse
Music: Brian Tyler
Co-producer: Art Montersatelli
Costume designer: Gloria Gresham
Editor: Augie Hess
Cast:
L.T. Bonham: Tommy Lee Jones
Aaron Hallam: Benicio Del Toro
Abby: Connie Nielsen, Irene: Leslie Stefanson
Ted: John Finn
Moret: Jose Zuniga
Van Zandt: Ron Canada
Dale Hewitt: Mark Pellegrino
Running time -- 94 minutes
MPAA rating R...
- 3/14/2003
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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