Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27190 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-10-06
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.77:1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 91 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
William Friedkin's taut direction highlights The Hunted, a bloodsport thriller that works best without dialogue. It's a prime vehicle for co-stars 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. Traumatised by atrocities in Kosovo four years earlier (the site of an action-packed prologue), Hallam (Del Toro) is seemingly psychotic and now killing in the forests of Oregon; Bonham (Jones) is lured out of retirement by a tenacious FBI agent (Connie Nielsen) to end Hallam's murder spree. The hackneyed plot is derivative to a fault (no surprise from the screenwriters of Collateral Damage), and the whole movie's a foregone conclusion, but Friedkin inspires fine work from his well-trained stars while exploring the ambiguity of Hallam's character. Lushly photographed by Caleb Deschanel, The Hunted is a survivalist's dream, militarily authentic and most effective when its primal instincts are cinematically expressed. --Jeff Shannon

Synopsis
When the body count begins to rise in the woods, it's not the wildlife that needs to be afraid. An expert assassin is on the loose taking out the hunters. Now the man who trained the killer must take up the final challenge and face the demons in his own past. Echoing Francis Ford Coppola's APOCALYPSE NOW, William Friedkin's THE HUNTED opens with a close-up of the protagonist, Aaron Hallam (Benicio Del Toro)--a Special Ops soldier who is witnessing atrocities in Kosovo. His battle stress soon turns him into a killing machine, as he murders hunters in the Oregon woods. Meanwhile, L.T. Bonham (Tommy Lee Jones) is living a solitary existence in the Pacific Northwest, rescuing wolves and living off the land. The Feds lure Bonham out of retirement, since he was responsible for training Hallam--and might be the only person alive who can stop him. Combining elements of RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD--in which Richard Crenna played the only man who could stop the battle-fatigued Sylvester Stallone--with THE PARK IS MINE--in which Jones played a Vietnam veteran who took over Central Park and booby-trapped it--THE HUNTED is an exciting chase film that is infused with a compelling streak of humanity amid all the blood and gore. Del Toro and Jones are both excellent, conveying a father-and-son-like relationship that is filled with intrigue. Johnny Cash's talk-rendition of Bob Dylan's 'Highway 61' opens and closes the film with gusto.

Customer Reviews

How to tell the sharks from the guppys
Aaron Hallam (Del Torro) is a CIA assassin who according to his employers "Can no longer tell the sharks from the guppys" and has turned rogue. So L.T. (Jones) who in true Hollywood fashion is the man who trained him is brought in to hunt him down. Cue much running around and lots of frilly knife fights.
The first fifteen minutes where we see Hallam carry out an assassination in a Kosovan hellhole and then take out two CIA operatives in dense forest are the most interesting and tense. With the introduction of Jones character, the films moral centre, the tension dissipates and we are left with a slick but formulaic chase picture. The Fugitive meets First Blood.
Del Torro is miscast. He's far too lugubrious a presence to play a driven steely eyed killer and in the scenes where we see him training he looks about 20 years older than the other recruits. Jones growls and mumbles a lot. Connie Nielson does her best with an under developed role. The cinematography is lush when showing scenes of verdant woodland which reflects badly on the city scenes.
It's not a bad film but I'd expect better from Friedkin, the director of The French Connection and the script doesn't fully explain the motivations behind Del Torros character. If he,s so sick of all the blood and death then why is contributing more to the equation? The Hunted badly wants to be lean cruel shark of a movie but too often ends up like a guppy floundering in the net like confines of its own script.

Aimless
Benicio Del Toro stars here as Aaron Hallum, a trained Army killer seemingly severly distresed by his experiences in Kosovo. Four hunters have been killed in woodlands and Tommy Lee Jones' character, LT Bonham, a tracker extraordinaire, is called in to assist in the hunt. As the plot develops, we find out that Hallum had been trained by Bonham in the art of survival and knifecraft, and had come to regard him as a sort of father figure and mentor.

Most of the action takes place outdoors in beautiful scenery, be it in woodlands, snowfalls or on the edge of a river. The script is kind of hackneyed, and the roles are derivative, but Jones gives a good performance none the less. Del Toro is not in Oscar mode here, but does turn in a performance as a confused and dazed man.

The film lost coherence a bit when Del Toro is shown in a scenen forging his own knife, but the knife-fighting scenes have a gritty real feel to them. Overall it's not bad. It's just not great either.

'First Blood', crossed with 'The Fugitive'
It's not hard to see how this movie got made.. a director known for gritty streetwise thrillers (The French Connection), about a soldier who was trained to kill, but now can't turn it off due to battle scarring (First Blood, anyone?), starring Tommy lee Jones reprising his role in the Fugitive, but with a twist..
Tommy Lee Jones is just the right casting for the role of the 'Tracker' - a man whose father was a soldier, but trained his son how to kill, and survive in the wilderness, be stealthy - in order that he would never have to kill. Now one of his proteges has gone rogue, and TLJ is brought out of retirement to track him down, meeting along the way the FBI agent played by Connie Nielsen.
The concept is a good one, if unoriginal. The idea of the tracker is fascinating, and as the extras on the DVD show, not without basis in fact - but the execution is a mixed bag.
On the plus side, the knife fighting scenes have a gritty fast moving realism to them that has rarely been seen. This is one of the movies big attractions. On the minus side, the movie feels like it has been chopped up, and pieces gone missing. Even the deleted scenes only give a hint to some of the directions the movie was going. There is a cynicism about Americas military here, similar to Friedkins last movie Rules of Engagement, but whatever message comes along with that has thinned out along the way. The roles the actors play do not leave the actors room to flesh out and inhabit their characters. Connie Nielsen does her best, which is pretty darn good, in a woefully underwritten role which seems in the end to serve little useful purpose.
On the whole though this is an edge of the seat chase movie, set in breathtaking, if chilly, scenery in Oregon and British Columbia, and should not disappoint. Just dont expect to remember much about it in a month or two.
3 and a half stars! I rounded up to 4 for the great fight choreagraphy..