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THE HUNTED Send This Review to a Friend
Director William Friedkin still knows how to pack plenty of visually arresting action into a movie. "The Hunted" is a hefty serving of almost non-stop violence and vivid fights for survival. But to what purpose? Do we need a movie in which the leading antagonists are trying to kill each other with whatever weapon is handy as well as with bare hands? The film is wrapped in a Biblical reference that is nonsensically applied, as if to give this murder machine of a movie a measure of importance that it doesn't earn.
Benicio Del Toro plays Aaron Hallam, who has been trained to be a vicious killer for secret military operations. We first see him in action in Kosovo, but the catch is that his killing prowess cannot be turned off. Thus it falls to Tommy Lee Jones as L. T. Bonham, the ace killer who trained Hallam, to control his one-time charge or eliminate him. Hence the Biblical idea of sacrificing a "son," pretentiously part of the screenplay by David Griffiths, Peter Griffiths and Art Monterastelli. Hallam sees Bonham as sort of a father figure to him.
The story gets more and more far-fetched as it goes along. The plot makes room for the appearance of Connie Nielsen as FBI agent Abby Durell, which at least provides for a feminine presence amidst the macho face-offs. Durell shows she can be pretty tough herself.
But it remains to Jones and Del Toro to battle it out with what seems like every dirty commando trick in the book. The film at least makes attractive use of settings in and around Portland, Oregon. But the violence becomes increasingly boring, and I felt like shouting, "Kill him already." A Paramount Pictures release.
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