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List Price: $9.98 | | Label: Paramount
Salesrank: 13562
Released: August 12, 2003 |
| Our Price: $4.03 |
| Used Price: $1.09 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Directed by Academy Award winner William Friedkin, THE HUNTED follows FBI agent Abby Durrell (Nielson) and her new recruit, L.T. Bonham (Jones) - a specialist in deep-woods tracking, as they team up to track and hunt down trained assassin, Aaron Hallam (Del Toro), who made a sport out of fatally shooting deer hunters in the forests outside Portland, Oregon. Using his well-honed nature skills to locate Hallam, Bonham soon finds himself and his partner lured into a gut-wrenching game of cat and mouse. With ruthless precision and murderous skill, Hallam remains one step ahead of his pursuers as Bonham and Durrell try to outwit him in the natural and urban wildernesses before Hallem turns them into his next victims.
Description of The Hunted (Widescreen Edition):
William Friedkin's taut direction highlights The Hunted, a bloodsport thriller that works best without dialogue. It's a prime vehicle for costars 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. Traumatized 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
The Hunted (Widescreen Edition) Reviews:
Good Cast, Good Action, LImited Story 
2009-10-28 - I like Tommy Lee Jones. Benicio Del Toro's not bad. Connie Nielsen looks great. William Friedkin is a good director. So what happened? A more developed script would've helped. The Hunted boasts impressive knife fighting sequences - albeit mainly of Tommy vs. Benicio. Throughout the film, Tommy Lee looks wracked with guilt because of his past but doesn't do much about it. Meanwhile, Benicio plays the war scarred assassin with no way out. That's pretty much the storyline as The Hunted combines chase sequences, Rambo First Blood forest scenarios and a one way ticket to the end. There is a tremendous opportunity to up the psychological ante in the Hunted, but it never quite materialises. Still, this is watchable especially if you're a Tommy Lee fan.
Two Fine Talents Take a Day Off
2009-10-02 - Friedkin and Jones have done notable work multiple times. One assumes this was made for the money to be made although it would appear that it failed at the box office. Nevertheless, for those who know that the logic for the action may be quite flawed but like to see chases and hand-to-hand combat, this should be a satisfying film. Obviously, those with no such taste will miss nothing by giving this a pass. Jones has nothing much to do beyond the action but looks good doing it; the actor playing the hunted does a commendable job doing what the hunted are supposed to do in films of this sort-not much acting but looking good in the closeups. Other assorted actors do all that was required of them without any embarrassing themselves. All-in-all, no significance besides action for the sake of action. Incidentally, relevant to this and many other films, both theatrical and made for TV: I do think it indecent to use scenes of real horror in the context of rather trivial even if entertaining pursuits. The justifiably respected principals of the film, no doubt agree, so that the presence of such scenes here probably means they drastically overestimated the quality of the film that they made.
excellent 
2009-07-26 - Growing up in the 80s as a geeky kid with Cerebal Palsy, I grew to hate action films. Arnold Shwartznager and Chuck Norris seemed like idiots, and represented the right wing reactionary politics I despise. But seeing The Hunted made me realize I don't dislike action films at all, just bad actors and comic book direction.
The Hunted stars Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro. Jones trains Del Toro how to kill with knives in the army, and the student sees the horrors of war in 1999 Kosovo. He comes home and begins to kill hunters, as he has become an animal rights fanatic. His exposure to violence has embeded violence into him. He tries to do the nobel thing, but does not realize his own pathology in how he goes about this.
Assisting the FBI, the teacher tries to track his renagade student down.
The Hunted, is of course, directed by the great Biily Friedkin, and this makes all the differance. During a car chase on a rainy cold day, the car is stuck in traffic, and you can see the driver tired, cold, struggling with the steering wheel. You begin to feel tired. Your arms start to hurt.
In another scene, the instuctor teaches his students how to kill with knives, stabbing numbered points of the body. The instuctions are rote. Friedkin shows how young man are turned into murder machines with the same detatchment they are taught to drive or flip Big Macs. This is absolutely chilling, and not in a cinamatic, thrill-chill way. It really sends a sick feeling through you.
The teacher is chasing his mad student out of guilt for the methodical trarining he gave him. Later, they end up in a knife fight. These cuts hurt. You can feel them going into YOUR skin. The duel is long and you realize, it is protracted, disgusting work to knife someone to death. It is a mean, horrible busness, even if it is self-defense. Only Freidkin can take what would be action fare and elevate it into an anti-violent statement.
For the longest time, I have always thought Martin Scorcesse was our best filmmaker. His use of unique camara angles, imaginative transitions and attention to detail makes an extremely compelling case for this.
But after seeing The Hunted--which made me revisit French Connection and The Exorsist--my money is now on Friedkin. He may not have the flawless track record of Scorcesse, but his feel for the viceral is simply amazing. Scorcesse uses the physical to work your emotions. Friedkin uses the physical to work your body, actually giving you tactile sensations that make you feel what his charactors are undergoing. It is astounding.
The Hunted is not a complex story, but the acting is fantastic, focusing on the emotions instead of the stunts. When you work with a director like Billy Friedkin, all you have to do is act. Leave the action up to the master himself.
Popcorn thriller
2009-03-23 - Good movie. Not a great movie. Tommy Lee Jones plays a good mentor/teacher. Beautiful scenery and location. Fights scenes are graphic, definitly not a movie for children. Jones and Benico do alot of their own stunts.
Utterly Stupid Movie 
2009-01-31 - At least Rambo had a reason he was causing so much ruckus. This guy is just, well pointless. Supposedly all he sees people as is targets, except for a little girl and her mom, and just about everyone else he meets.
Buy Rambo instead, you'll be glad you did. This movie is not worth a rental fee, let alone a purchase. I'm glad I got it from the library for free, that way I'm only out the time I wasted watching it.
