Hey folks, Harry here with a pair of reviews that go far more in depth in regards to the latest film from William Friedkin... THE HUNTED. Both are sort of so-so on the film, but unfortunately both reviews go into insane amounts of details and SPOILERS so if you have any desire at all in seeing a movie about Tommy Lee Jones huntind down Benicio Del Toro... I would recommend skipping these reviews, as there is simply way too many details going on here!
Hello Harry,
Valmont here. Went to see "The Hunted" last night. For anyone who doesn't know, it stars Benicio Del Toro as a badass military guy who's a little off his rocker, and Tommy Lee Jones as Benicio's former mentor now assigned to track him down and bring him in. If the premise of the movie sounds a bit like "First Blood" meets "The Fugitive"...well, it is. But unfortunately that's not a good thing.
The movie starts in Kosovo in 1999, where Benicio and a team of badass soldiers take out some big baddie who is slaughtering Albanians (or "filth" as he refers to them, just so we know that he is definitely bad). Benicio is sent to kill him, and does--with remarkable efficiency. Unfortunately, the horrors that Benicio is forced to witness apparently drive him insane.
I say "apparently" becuase the movie doesn't seem to make it very clear. Benicio's character is very poorly developed, and despite Benicio's best efforts, I just didn't give a damn what had happened to him. This, of course, led me to a big problem with the film, which was that I didn't give a damn about what would happen to him, either.
We meet Tommy Lee Jones out in the snow somewhere, nursing an injured wolf. The scene is charming, if you can get past the unrealisticness of it. We see that Tommy Lee is a "good" guy.
Next we're treated to Benicio in the woods taking out a couple of deer hunters. He's all camouflaged a la Rambo in "First Blood," and he makes short work of the hunters, taunting them before dressing and quartering them like game deer (although this happens off-screen). This scene is great if you dislike hunters like I do. Yet it makes you feel like you're missing something. If Benicio's character is troubled by all the horrific death he saw in Kosovo (conveyed in flashbacks), why is he killing people?
Of course, the government must enlist the aid of Tommy Lee to catch Benicio. I guess they saw "The Fugitive," because I can't really think of any other reason why they would send an aging (Tommy Lee is in grey-beard mode here) non-military trainer, who has never killed anyone before, after the "killing-machine" (as Benicio is described in the movie).
Tommy Lee plays his standard badass tracker here, quite literally in this movie, as we are informed that he learned his tracking skills from his father, who wouldn't let him go to Vietnam. That's about all the character development we get on Tommy Lee. Oh, also he doesn't like guns. And we believe this because of Benicio's proficiency with knives--learned (again, in flashback with Tommy Lee going from full grey beard to just a black mustache so we know it's the past) from Tommy Lee's training regime.
Tommy Lee shows up in the woods at the crime scene and orders everyone away so he can do his thing, and sure, we've all seen this before--the loner who has his own way of doing things, the FBI agent who doesn't trust his methods (this time played by some cute actress who did a passable job of hiding her accent). So far, I'm okay with this movie. It's not original, but I don't hate myself for watching it.
Then Tommy Lee gets down on the ground like an animal to track Benicio. That's when things start getting ridiculous. He finds Benicio's camp, and finds a photo of some woman (that conveniently has her name and phone number on the back so Tommy Lee will know where to find Benicio later). Benicio appears and some fighting ensues, and the fighting is rather good--it looks tough and sounds brutal, and doesn't look overly-choreographed. Benicio gets the best of Tommy Lee, but fortunately the FBI lady has followed and shoots Benicio with a tranquilizer dart.
Benicio is taken into custody by the FBI, but some shady government types come to transport him elsewhere, dropping hints of how deadly badass Benicio is. Of course, Benicio escapes from the truck (in a pretty cool scene) and is on the run again. So, Tommy Lee must track him again. Fortunately, Tommy Lee remembers that name and phone number, and he and the FBI lady find Benicio at his girlfriend's house.
They corner Benicio, but of course he escapes in daring fashion and is loose in the city. Tommy Lee must now track him in the city, and if you're seeing a pattern here then you're starting to understand the problem with this movie. I dare say Benicio did more running in this movie than Tom Cruise did in "The Firm." Some cat-and-mouse in the city ensues, with Tommy Lee making some amazing deductive leaps (hmm...those footprints in the grass must belong to my prey, even though there's about a hundred people in this park...).
Tommy Lee, with the help of apparently every officer in the city, trap Benicio on a bridge. Of course, he escapes by jumping into the water. Now, I can get past him surviving the jump. I can. I can suspend my disbelief that much. What I couldn't accept was Benicio's forging a knife.
That's right--forging a knife. After he escapes on the bridge, he decides he needs a knife, so he starts a fire with a stick (anyone who watches "Survivor" should understand what an amazing feat this is), somehow gets the fire to be hot enough to melt a hunk of metal, and then hammers it into a knife shape and sharpens it.
Now you're probably thinking what I was thinking: how does Benicio have time for this, when Tommy Lee and every cop in the state is hot on his trail? Well, rest assured Benicio is okay, since Tommy Lee has also decided he needs a knife, and has decided to whittle one out of a rock (apparently store-bought knives just aren't good enough for Tommy Lee). Maybe he just thought it'd be fair to give Benicio time to do his metalworking.
Needless to say, it all climaxes (such as it is) with a knife fight between Benicio and Tommy Lee (but not before Tommy Lee gets through some traps Benicio set a la "First Blood" again...which reminds me: with all his forging of knives, when did Benicio find time to chop down a tree and make rope so he could set these traps?). Despite Tommy Lee being over-the-hill, not having any actual experience in using his training, and Benicio being in perfect physical condition and well-experienced, Tommy Lee still gets the better of him. Sadly, we're not even remotely invested in which one wins. I could've cared less who lived and died, because I didn't give a damn about either character.
And that's the biggest problem with the film. I can let slide the ridiculous and implausible action sequences and traps and weapon-making, because it's a movie. But when I don't have any emotional investment in the characters, it's harder to let the other things go. In fact, I can't help but focus on things like the silly knife-making scenes, because there's nothing else to hold my attention. Sure, the film is a little suspenseful in the way a car chase on the television is suspenseful--you want to see if someone can get away, but you don't really care one way or the other if they actually do. But think about how engrossing one of those television chases would be if you actually knew the person being chased. What if it were a loved one, or even if it was just some guy you went to high school with? That's how I felt about this movie--the chase was mildly interesting, but I would've been much more into it if I knew the characters a little bit.
Well, that's my two cents (or perhaps a bit more). Do yourself a favour and don't pay full price to see it. Until the next free test screening....
Love & Kisses,
Valmont
This review has plenty of spoilers in it...
OK, I saw "The Hunted" about a week ago. While we were in line outside the theater, the peiple running the test screening were coming up to us and telling us, "We were told by the studio to warn everyone that this film is very violent." This, naturally, peaked my interest as I've been to plenty of test screenings and never had any sort of "warning". (This includes Blade 2 which was WAY violent)
So the plot goes like this: Be warned...there are a few spoilers in here.
READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!!!
The film begins with two guys out hunting in the woods. Suddenly, a mysterious individual, played by Benicio Del Toro, appears and begins to hunt THEM. Basically, he uses hunting techniques like trip wires, nets etc. to trap them and kill them. This will sound kinda funny, but this reminded me of "First Blood" a bit.
Anyway, the grizzly nature of these murders forces the authorities to go and (everyone together now) GET THE ONLY MAN WHO CAN CRACK THE CASE. This, of course, is Tommy Lee Jones, who plays a grizzled outdoorsman living in Canada (and I believe working for the wildlife services or some such thing ). As the previous reviewer noted, it's the same Tommy Lee Jones character we've seem a dozen times. After much hmmm-ing and haw-ing, he is flown into Washington to help out on the case. Being the outdoorsman he is, Tommy Lee recognizes the modus operandi of our killer straight away....he KNOWS this guy. And so the chase is on.
I should probably leave it there so as not to spoil the whole film. As the film progresses we learn more about the relationship between Del Toro and Jones' characters. As the previous reviewer mentioned, the reasoning behind Del Toro's actions WAS a bit hazy. They DO explain it, but it really didnt cut it for me. I guess I just couldn't quite get into his character as much as I would've liked. (which is doubly disappointing as I really like Del Toro's work) As far as the "warning of violence", it WAS pretty violent but not exceedingly so. There was a lot of close quarters combat between the 2 leads which was pretty intense and well-filmed.
As for the movie itself, it really didnt do a lot for me. It kinda felt like a typical "thriller" on par with "Kiss the Girls" or something like that. Nothing really bad, but nothing terribly memorable either.
Sonic Death Monkey signing out.
