The Hunted
Theatrical release poster
Directed byWilliam Friedkin
Written by
  • David Griffiths
  • Peter Griffiths
  • Art Monterastelli
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyCaleb Deschanel
Edited byAugie Hess
Music byBrian Tyler
Production
companies
Distributed by
Release date
  • March 14, 2003 (2003-03-14) (United States)
Running time
94 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$55 million
Box office$46.1 million[1]

The Hunted is a 2003 American action thriller film directed by William Friedkin. It stars a Tommy Lee Jones as a retired Special Forces Trainer, who is tasked with tracking down a former student of his played by Benicio del Toro who has gone rogue; Connie Nielsen also stars.

The film was released on March 14, 2003. It received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $46 million against its $55 million budget.

Plot

U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Aaron Hallam, a former Delta Force operator, has spent much of his career performing covert assassinations and black operations for the U.S. government. He is awarded the Silver Star for his service in the Kosovo War (specifically for assassinating a genocidal Serbian military commander), but is left wracked with irreversible Battle Stress and PTSD from the atrocities he witnessed.

In the wilderness of Silver Falls State Park, Oregon, Hallam encounters two hunters equipped with expensive scoped rifles. Hiding in the brush, Hallam tells them that, due to their use of guns and scopes, they are not "true hunters". Insulted, the hunters pursue him, but are overwhelmed by Hallam's tactics and traps and are brutally murdered.

L.T. Bonham, a former civilian survival and combat instructor for spec ops soldiers, lives in a secluded cabin deep in the woods of British Columbia. He is approached by the FBI, who ask him to help apprehend the perpetrator of the killings. Bonham agrees and joins the FBI task force led by Assistant Special Agent in Charge Abby Durrell. Arriving at the crime scene, he proves that one man with a knife was responsible for the hunters’s deaths, not several men with hatchets as previously believed by the agents. Bonham convinces Abby let him track the killer on his own, but she insists that he take an FBI radio.

Bonham discovers Hallam's personal effects in a small cave right before the assassin shows up, and recognizes him as one of his students. The latter asks the former why he never answered the letters he sent, but Bonham demands to know why Hallam killed those hunters. His protege explains that he believes the men were “sweepers” sent to eliminate him. Bonham tries and fails to get Hallam to surrender, and two of them come to blows. After knocking his teacher down, Hallam is struck by an FBI tranquilizer (Bonham’s radio had a tracer) and taken into custody.

During his interrogation, Hallam is uncooperative and looks mainly to Bonham, who he views as a father figure. The FBI are then forced to hand him over to three of his fellow JSOC operators led by Dale Hewitt, who arrive with a letter authorizing taking possession of the prisoner. Hewitt tells them that Hallam lost control during a post-Kosovo mission, killing numerous innocent civilians, and can’t stand trial because his military assignments are classified. While being transported, Hallam is told by his captors that he’ll be terminated to ensure his silence; he manages to kill all the operatives and escape.

Alerted to the incident, Bonham and the FBI search for Hallam. Bonham finds him at the house of his ex-girlfriend and her daughter in Portland. The two have a tense stare-down and stand-off, but he flees after Abby arrives to apprehend him. Pursued by the FBI and the Portland Police Bureau, Hallam ambushes and kills Harry Van Zandt, Abby’s Boss, and her partner and friend Bobby Moret in a sewer, before boarding a streetcar to blend in. The police block the bridge the streetcar is on, and he takes a hostage at knife-point to escape from Bonham. Eventually, Hallam climbs to and then dives off the top of the bridge, fleeing upstream.

Abby, devastated and wanting revenge for her fallen colleagues, intends to deploy the full force of the FBI into the woods in search of Hallam. Bonham protests this, asserting that sending more agents after Hallam will only result in further bloodshed, and unsuccessfully argues that he is the only one who can stop the renegade soldier he trained.

Resurfacing up the river, Hallam crafts a knife out of reclaimed metal, as Bonham taught him. Meanwhile, Bonham crafts his own knife out of stone and enters the wilderness alone find Hallam. Bonham is caught by one of Hallam's traps and is thrown down a waterfall. Surviving, he meets Hallam at the bottom, and they engage in hand-to-hand combat. The two sustain severe injuries, and Bonham's knife is broken, but he gains the upper hand and fatally stabs Hallam with his own knife just as Abby and the FBI arrive.

Bonham, mostly recovered, returns to his home in British Columbia. He starts to burn Hallam's aforementioned letters, in which he expressed his concerns over the things he witnessed during his service.

Cast

Production

The film was partially filmed in and around Portland, Oregon and Silver Falls State Park. Portland scenes were filmed in Oxbow Park, the South Park Blocks, the Columbia Blvd Treatment Plant, and Tom McCall Waterfront Park.[2] The technical adviser for the film was Tom Brown Jr., an American outdoorsman and wilderness survival expert. The story is partially inspired by a real-life incident involving Brown, who was asked to track down a former pupil and Special Forces sergeant who had evaded capture by authorities. This story is told in Tom's book, Case Files Of The Tracker. Chapter 2 of this book, "My Frankenstein," describes Brown's tracking and fight with a former special operations veteran.

The hand-to-hand combat and knife fighting in the film featured Filipino Martial Arts. Thomas Kier and Rafael Kayanan of Sayoc Kali were brought in by Benicio del Toro.[3] They were credited as knife fight choreographers for the film.

Reception

Box office

The box office for the film was less than its reported production budget of $55 million.[4] The Hunted opened on March 14, 2003, at #3 in 2,516 theaters across North America and grossed $13.48 million during its opening weekend.[5] It went on to gross $34,244,097 in North America and $11,252,437 internationally markets for a worldwide total of $45,496,534.[4]

Buena Vista International handles the distribution in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Netherlands and parts of Latin America.

Columbia TriStar Film Distributors International handles Finnish & Swedish theatrical distribution through its then distribution partner Nordisk Film.

In United Kingdom - Redbus Film Distribution handles distribution under the name Helkon SK. It was released on 6 June 2003 (despite being renamed to Redbus on 6 May 2003).

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 29% of 149 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4.7/10. The website's consensus reads: "An all too familiar chase movie that's not worth the talents involved."[6] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 40 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[7] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale.

Many reviewers noted striking similarities to First Blood, with which this film was unfavorably compared. Rolling Stone called it "Just a Rambo rehash."[8] While there was some praise for the cinematography and the action scenes, much criticism was directed at the thin plot and characterization, and the general implausibility. Rex Reed of the New York Observer called it a "Ludicrous, plotless, ho-hum tale of lurid confrontation." The UK magazine, Total Film said the film was "scarcely exciting to watch."[9]

However, the film also received praise from other high-profile critics, particularly for the fact it kept the special effects and stunts restrained. For example, Roger Ebert said, "We've seen so many fancy high-tech computer-assisted fight scenes in recent movies that we assume the fighters can fly. They live in a world of gravity-free speed-up. Not so with Friedkin's characters."[10] He reviewed the film on his own site and scored it 3 1/2 out of 4 stars.[10] Time Out London was also positive saying, "Friedkin's lean, mean thriller shows itself more interested in process than context, subtlety and character development pared away in favour of headlong momentum and crunching set pieces."[11]

References

  1. ↑ The Hunted (2003). Box Office Mojo. Retrieved on 2014-05-22.
  2. ↑ "EXTRAS". The Oregonian. 2003-03-17. pp. C02.
  3. ↑ The Hunted. Sayoc Combat Choreography (2003-08-12). Retrieved on 2014-05-22.
  4. 1 2 The Hunted at Box Office Mojo
  5. ↑ Daily Box Office for The Hunted from Box Office Mojo
  6. ↑ "The Hunted". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved August 6, 2023.
  7. ↑ "The Hunted". Metacritic. Fandom, Inc. Retrieved August 6, 2023.
  8. ↑ "The Hunted : Review". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on November 20, 2007.
  9. ↑ Total Film – The Hunted
  10. 1 2 "The Hunted". Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on May 27, 2005.
  11. ↑ The Hunted Review. Movie Reviews - Film - Time Out London
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