Movie Review - The Hunted

Directed by Academy Award winner William Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist), The Hunted is a fascinating and flawed film. It stars fellow Oscar winner Tommy Lee Jones as L. T. Bonham, a famous tracker used by the army to train special forces operators to hunt and kill their targets in an almost invisible manner. He is called upon by the FBI to track one of his former students, ex-Green Beret Aaron Hallam (Benicio Del Torro, another Oscar winner) who has gone rogue, and has killed at least four hunters in the woods of the Pacific Northwest.

The tactics both men use are incredible, and are portrayed as realistically as possible, thanks to real life survival expert/tracker Tom Brown, Jr., who not only served as a technical advisor, but was also the basis for the Bonham character.

One of the major flaws of the film is that it never quite gets the balance between realistic and fantastical right. Jones is terrific as usual in his role as the aging Bonham, but one can't help but wonder how much better he would have been had he not been given a couple more months to get into shape. For a man who lives off the land, he seems a bit paunchy and slow. Del Toro, on the other hand, seems to put about as much effort and emotion into his role as you might put into taking out the trash. With the exception of a few moments of true madness behind his eyes, he seems to be woefully miscast as the bad ass soldier Hallam. Add to that the fact that he seems to be at least twenty pounds overweight, and by the end of the movie you'll be wishing they'd found someone else, not just the first Oscar winner that answered the phone.

But what's done wrong on the screen is matched by what is missing. Bonham, who at one point says he's never killed anyone, shows no hesitation when it comes time for fight Hallam to the death. Sure, he trains men to kill on instinct, but can one accomplish that having never done it himself? Also missing is any trace of a relationship between Bonham and Hallam, who seems to trust Bonham over everyone else. Yet at the end, we see that Bonham has kept several of the letters that Hallam has been secretly sending him. We seem to be missing a scene where Bonham shows Hallam any kind of softness or forgiveness for his crimes.

Also glossed over is what would have been the most interesting aspect of the film. Hallam escapes custody early in the film, leading the FBI and Bonham on a chase throughout Portland. What could have been an extremely cool scene (Bonham struggling to track Hallam, who had learned additional skills during his time in the military, through an urban area) is reduced to a five minute sequence filled with coincidental sightings and a ridiculous jump off a bridge.

The films flaws, however, are almost forgotten by the time the film reaches it's climax: an amazing, bloody, innovative knife fight between Hallam and Bonham, student and teacher. Never before have I seen a more brutal or well choreographed knife fight on a film. It brings to mind a line from the rarely seen David Mamet film Spartan (which I will review here someday) in which Special Forces operative Scott (Val Kilmer) responds to a soldier's affirmation that she teaches knife fighting by saying "Don't you teach 'em knife fighting. Teach 'em to kill. That way, they meet some sonofabitch who studied knife fighting, they send his soul to hell." Not a movement in this fight is wasted. There's no fancy blocking of a knife with a knife (which is ridiculous), nor is there any ludicrous monologuing. Just two men who know how to kill trying to end each other's lives by any means necessary.

Alas, it isn't quite enough to overshadow the film's shortcomings, and the feeling you are left with is one of wasted potential. You'd expect more from three Oscar winners.
Grade: 6
(All films are graded on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being cinematic perfection and 1 being every Police Academy film with a number in the title.)