The Hunted (Widescreen Edition)

The Hunted (Widescreen Edition)
by William Friedkin

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DVD Reviews of The Hunted (Widescreen Edition)

DVD Review: there is no story
Summary: 2 Stars

The F.B.I. are called in and they turn to the man who happened to train Aaron, L.T. Bonham (Tommy Lee Jones), to catch him and/or stop him. L.T. agrees and does find him but nearly dies in the process, only to be saved by the person in charge of the F.B.I. contingent on the case, Abby Durrell (Connie Nielsen (I)), who tranquilizes Aaron at the last possible moment before he kills L.T.

Aaron is then taking into custody only to escape and lead Aaron on a hunt through Portland and eventually back into the forest where L.T. finally catches up to him for their final showdown with knives.

My Comments:
I had the conception that this movie was going to be something like a Rambo remake with a U.S. special forces operative going a little haywire and wanting to either be left alone or kill everyone. Well, it is pretty similar except in this movie the Rambo character, Aaron, isn't really provoked and ends up dying at the hands of his trainer instead of giving up to his trainer. So, the idea isn't really all that original. There is, however, one element of the movie that is original which is why I gave it two stars instead of one, but I'll get to that in a minute.

As for the story, it's horrible. There is an attempt to explain why Aaron went crazy - he saw too much violence in Kosovo and snapped. But there is no attempt to explain how he ended up in the forest in Oregon nor is there any connection drawn between him being in the forest and him killing the hunters. There is an attempt to humanize Aaron, by having him threaten to reveal top secret information and also having him meet up with a woman and her daughter, but both of these are quickly dismissed for what seems to be the primary focus of the movie - knife fights and L.T. tracking Aaron. Dismissing the potentially interesting subplot of Erin wanting to expose the U.S. governments top secret assassination operations was the wrong thing to do, it gave Aaron a better motivation for the killings then just being psycho. It also isn't really explained why L.T. never replied to Aaron's letters nor why he quit training killers in the military; a lot goes unexplained in this movie and it could have been much better.

As for the story we see in the movie, it just gets worse. At least 1/2 of the movie is just L.T. tracking Aaron until they finally meet up for the 25 minute knife fight by a waterfall. Along the way Aaron does some pretty silly things, like climbing a bridge tower instead of just diving off into the water or even getting on the subway in the first place. Aaron also seems to lose L.T. about a million times only for L.T. to suddenly find him again without any explanation. Then, of course, the F.B.I. has to choose not to listen to L.T. and spends most of the second half of the movie combing the river and river banks looking for Aaron only to somehow become informed of the final confrontation taking place and arrive just in time to watch it end. How they became informed of the fight is beyond me.

There are no plot twists, though I'm guessing that the truck accident was supposed to be one but anyone with half a brain could have seen that coming. And, frankly, the movie is pretty boring. What's more, when you watch the special features afterwards you realize that most knife fights last all of 20-30 seconds before one of the combatants is dead or dying. For some reason the fights between Aaron and L.T. last forever. It was wholly implausible, but I guess a 20 second fight scene wouldn't be as fun to watch, thus the extended fight sequences. The story, as a whole, is pretty bad. Even the ending is kind of lame.

As for the acting, it wasn't too bad. Both Benicio del Toro and Tommy Lee Jones are good, but they are the only ones worth mentioning. I'm thinking that in the original script Abby Durell was supposed to have a bigger part, but for some reason she is really limited to just being L.T.'s sounding board when he isn't chasing or fighting Aaron. As for the rest of the actors, they were pretty much knife fodder for Aaron and didn't need to be good, so they weren't.

The one original thing I felt the movie did was introduce the audience to a new form of knife fighting. The fighting choreography was actually pretty interesting and fun to watch, though it did tend to get a bit carried away. I gave the movie an extra star just for trying something new.

Overall, this is really just a slightly modified remake of Rambo with a different ending, and, sadly, that's about all. If you've seen Rambo and liked it, you probably won't really want to see this because it might corrupt your vision of a great movie. Of course, on the other hand, if you didn't like Rambo, you probably won't like this movie because it is pretty much a copy cat. So, if you didn't see Rambo, you may want to give this one a try. As I said, the knife fighting is pretty interesting and some of the special features that come on the DVD are good additions. But as a story, I think the director, William Friedkin, probably ruined this by focusing so much on specific locations instead of telling a compelling and interesting story. I don't recommend this movie (and I like special ops/action/war movies).

Description of The Hunted (Widescreen Edition)