“The Hunted” (Paramount Pictures)
When you have Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro in a movie together you have starpower galore. If you give them even the semblance of a plot they can make movie magic happen. Their new movie is “The Hunted.” It is a dud! There isn’t even the barest trace of a story to follow. It is just the “hunt” and it goes on and on and on.
As the movie starts we see Aaron Hallam (Del Toro) in Kosovo. He is a military man pulling off an assassination. This part of the movie is so dark and so muddled you have no idea of who is doing what to whom. Del Toro stands out only because his mournful eyes are huge and contrast with the dark camouflage paint which covers his body.
Now flash forward a few years and we see L T Bonham (Jones) going through a snow covered woods to help release a wolf that has been caught in a snare. He seems to empathize with the animal as it tries to evade the hunters who have laid out the trap.
Soon the FBI comes calling to ask Bonham to assist them in finding the killer of two hunters. SA Abby Durrell (Connie Neilsen) leads the team and she knows that only someone with Bonham’s skills can track down this killer. Of course it is Hallam and he has been trained by Bonham when they were both in the military.
The rest of the movie is ‘the hunt.” It goes on and on with Bonham seemingly possessing supernatural talent in tracking Hallam down. Even I could have evaded the tracker with all the lead time and resources available to Hallam. But that would have made a movie without a final battle scene.
When Bonham and Hallam go mano a mano it is another joke. These two guys can withstand knife wounds and other injuries and not be harmed at all. It might as well be Freddy Krueger versus Jason for all the reality this scene utilizes.
The movie is rated R for violence and profanity.
William Friedkin directed this movie and he has certainly shown talent as a director in the past. Somehow he, the stars and the scriptwriter were all having a run of bad days when this movie was made. Let’s hope they all move on to better projects in the future.
I scored “The Hunted” a not found 3 out of 10.
©2003 Jackie K. Cooper
