The Hunted (2003) is what happens when you take a generic action thriller and
put it in the hands of a master filmmaker like William Friedkin. While it
certainly doesn’t belong among the top tier of his films, the director takes a
standard cat and mouse chase movie and strips it down to its most basic
elements. He does something quite intriguing with this genre movie by
downplaying the forgettable dialogue and cliché plotting in favor of visual
storytelling.
After receiving a medal for
assassinating a Serbian military commander in Kosovo, United States Army
Sergeant First Class Aaron Hallam (Benicio del Toro) is unable to forget the
horrors he witnessed while on his covert combat mission. He saw men, women and
children massacred wholesale by Serbian soldiers and Friedkin immerses us in
the chaos and madness of Albanian villagers being systematically decimated by
utilizing horror genre tropes. He wisely keeps the dialogue to a minimum for
the first nine minutes of the movie in favor of letting nightmarish visuals do
all the heavy lifting.
When he’s not rescuing a
wounded wolf from dumbass hunters in the wilderness of British Columbia, L.T.
Bonham (Tommy Lee Jones) is an expert in military survival and combat training.
The FBI comes calling because they need his wilderness savvy to track Hallam
who has gone rogue since returning home and become the bogeyman of forests in
Oregon, gutting two deer hunters with his combat knife. Bonham taught Hallam
everything he knows and the FBI uses his familiarity with his former student to
track him down. Aiding him in this endeavor is Assistant Special Agent in
Charge Abby Durrell (Connie Nielson wasted in a largely forgettable role). Their
initial confrontation is not just an exciting battle of wills but also of
physicality as the student attempts to school his mentor. It becomes obvious
that conventional law enforcement methods will not be good enough to catch and
stop Hallam so Bonham goes it alone and Friedkin sets up the inevitable
confrontation between the two men.
Benicio del Toro spends most
of The Hunted looking haunted, opting
to downplay his madness by conveying it in his eyes, which is good because the
dialogue he is given is cliché and forgettable. While watching The Hunted I was reminded of that great
line of dialogue that John Malkovich’s rogue government operative turned
assassin says In the Line of Fire
(1993), “And now they want to destroy me because we can’t have monsters roaming
the quiet countryside now can we?” This certainly applies to Hallam as well who
must be contained by his government handlers once he’s gone off the reservation
as it were.
Friedkin and Del Toro do
their best to try and humanize Hallam. He’s not a monstrous killing machine but
a very damaged individual that has been so messed up by what he’s seen and done
for his country. He imagines conspiracies around every corner thanks to all the
covert work he’s done and can no longer switch it off. He’s become permanently
stuck in killer mode. To this end, Friedkin shows him trying to reconnect with
loved ones but he’s clearly passed the point of no return and not even appeals
from his former mentor will persuade him from his path.
While Del Toro gets to play
the spooky antagonist, Jones brings his trademark no-nonsense charisma to the
role. It is a real treat to see a seasoned pro like him work his understated
magic on a genre movie. I like that Friedkin shows Bonham combing through the
forest, analyzing marks on the ground and on trees much like a police officer
would scrutinize a crime scene. He is able to use his surroundings to find
Hallam.
I also like how Bonham’s body
language changes once he’s out of the wilderness – an environment he feels most
comfortable in – and in the city. As he talks to Durrell in her office, Bonham
anxiously fidgets with his hands, looking ill at ease and this is also
reflected in his posture. He never says to Durrell that he feels uncomfortable
– it is all conveyed visually. I also like that at certain moments when Bonham
is pursuing Hallam we see fear on his face. He’s not just some invulnerable
hero but someone prone to fear just like anyone else and that’s because he
knows what Hallam is capable of because he trained him.
Visually, Friedkin keeps
things interesting with a nicely orchestrated extended chase through the
streets of Portland that starts in cars and ends on a cable car. It
demonstrates Hallam’s uncanny ability to be elusive and blend into any
environment as well as Bonham’s skill as a tracker, studying tiny details that
most ignore in order to pursue him. This leads to the climactic battle and once
again Friedkin dispenses with dialogue in favor of letting the visuals tell the
story along with the help of two incredibly skilled actors that don’t need to
rely on words but rather body language to express themselves.
In the late 1980s, William
Friedkin read a few books about wilderness survival by and became friends with
professional tracker Tom Brown Jr. who trained Special Forces and SEAL teams to
survive harsh environments and kill without actually having killed anyone
himself. At the time, Brown “had tremendous guilt about who was being killed
and went through a tremendous guilt trip,” the filmmaker said in an interview.
Friedkin found Brown so interesting that he wanted to make a film about him but
felt that it would probably be a documentary. He actually started writing a
screenplay but never felt it worked and shelved it.
Several years later, Friedkin
read David and Peter Griffiths’ screenplay about a trained Delta Force-type
assassin that becomes a serial killer. The director met with them and then had
them meet Brown. They worked on a new draft and then Friedkin brought in
another screenwriter to work with Brown. The director was interested in
exploring a teacher-student relationship that would have “the seeds of an
exciting conflict – especially if the pupil has been driven mad by the number
of killings he had to do, and the teacher suffers from strong feelings of guilt
because he instructs others to kill, even though he’s never killed anyone
himself.”
Friedkin brought in Brown to
train Benicio del Toro and Tommy Lee Jones and served a consultant on the
movie. During the production he worked with the actors for two hours a day,
three to four days a week, teaching them how to survive in the wilderness.
Brown found that Jones didn’t need much training because he was already a
hunter and “good in the outdoors,” while Del Toro was less experienced but a fast
learner. Brown also brought in a knife specialist and another one in Sayoc Kali
martial arts for an average of two hours a day, five days a week. Del Toro
strove for authenticity with the scenes depicting hand-to-hand combat. “We
wanted to keep it as real as possible, and although an actual fight between two
guys with extraordinary knife skills could easily be over in seconds, ours is
very real in terms of how we block and how we react.”
With only seven days left of
principal photography, Del Toro was injured while filming a fight scene with
Jones. The actor broke a bone and dislocated seven others, which required
surgery. Filming stopped for seven months. Friedkin took that time to look at
the movie and find ways to improve it, which included asking Johnny Cash to
write a song for it.
The Hunted received mostly mixed to negative
reviews. In his review for The New York
Times, Elvis Mitchell wrote, “The stripped-down narrative is almost an
apology for the ludicrous story – but it’s just not enough of one.” Entertainment Weekly gave the movie a “C”
rating and Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote, “There’d be more inclination to ponder the
deeper psychological themes implied in this cat-and-mouse hunt if the movie
weren’t so obviously turned on by the fetishism of the story.” The Los Angeles Times’ Manohla Dargis wrote,
“The images of L.T. playing ‘wolf whisperer’ and Aaron slithering through the
forest are absurd, but the director’s mad-hatter logic never wavers. You believe
because Friedkin believes, at least until you realize none of it makes a bit of
sense.” USA Today gave the movie one
out of four stars and Mike Clark wrote, “You keep waiting for there to be more,
but there never is – other than the fact that it all gets gorier and uglier.” Rolling Stone gave it two out of four
stars and Peter Travers wrote, “William Friedkin directs the knife fights with French Connection relish, but the film
is just a Rambo rehash.” Roger Ebert,
however, gave the movie three-and-a-half out of four stars and wrote, “What
makes the movie fresh is that it doesn’t stand back and regard its pursuit as
an exercise, but stays very close to the characters and focuses on the actual
physical reality of their experience.”
Ultimately, Bonham has to
live with the guilt and regret that if he had read Hallam’s letters to him
early on all of this bloodshed might’ve been avoided. This realization gives The Hunted an unexpectedly somber not to
end on thereby defying the usual triumphant vibe that most thrillers of this
ilk go out on by the end credits. This may explain why it wasn’t a commercial
success, failing to make back its modest $55 budget. While it remains one of
Friedkin’s minor works, it is nonetheless an entertaining and engaging effort.
SOURCES
Scott B. “An Interview with
William Friedkin.” IGN. March 11, 2003.
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