| The Hunted | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | William Friedkin |
| Produced by | James Jacks Ricardo Mestres |
| Written by | David Griffiths Peter Griffiths Art Monterastelli |
| Starring | Tommy Lee Jones Benicio del Toro Connie Nielsen |
| Music by | Brian Tyler |
| Cinematography | Caleb Deschanel |
| Editing by | Augie Hess |
| Studio | Lakeshore Entertainment Alphaville Films |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures (US/Worldwide) Redbus Film Distribution (UK) |
| Release date(s) | March 14, 2003 |
| Running time | 94 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English / Serbian |
| Budget | $55 million |
| Box office | $45,496,534 [1] |
The Hunted is a 2003 American action thriller film directed by William Friedkin and starring Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio del Toro. Brian Tyler composed the film's score.
Contents |
In the Pacific Northwest wilderness, two hunters (who are later implied to be CIA "sweepers") are viciously murdered by Aaron Hallam (Benicio del Toro), a former 1st SFOD-D operator who is living in the wilderness. North of the Canadian border—in the wilderness of British Columbia—L.T. Bonham (Tommy Lee Jones), a former special operations instructor, is approached and asked to help apprehend Hallam, a former student of his. According to the authorities briefing Bonham, the younger man has gone renegade after suffering severe battle stress from his time in Kosovo.
Bonham agrees and is assisted in the manhunt by an FBI task force, led by a special agent-in-charge Abby Durrell (Connie Nielsen). It is Bonham himself, however, who locates and apprehends Hallam after tracking him and finding the subterranean den in which he's been living. After an intense stand-off, the two struggle in a quick fight in which Bonham is injured and Hallam is captured by the arriving agents. During his interrogation, Hallam states that he went AWOL because the Army now seeks to kill him before he can divulge information regarding the missions he's performed. This story is reinforced when the local authorities and FBI are circumvented by nameless SFOD-D operators with high clearance who arrive and take possession of the prisoner.
While being transported by his former SFOD-D team members in the back of an unmarked truck, Hallam manages to escape and kill the operatives, causing the vehicle to swerve out of control and overturn. Alerted to the accident, Bonham and the FBI team arrive at the scene and the chase begins again. The team tracks Hallam across the country, nearly catching him at his ex-wife's house, but Hallam consistently evades them. Realizing that the FBI's tactics aren't working, Bonham strikes out on his own and the search quickly becomes a personal battle between teacher and student, finally culminating in an intense knife fight among the waterfalls of a national forest. The film ends with Bonham killing Hallam with his own knife by stabbing him in the chest. The FBI team arrives too late, Bonham returns to British Columbia, where he starts burning letters that were sent to him from Hallam.
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, 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.
Dino Haynes and Hiro Koda were fight director and choreographer for the film. The brutal hand to hand combat and knife fighting in the film featured Filipino Martial Arts with Tom Kier and Rafael Kayanan of Sayoc Kali as consultants and is the most acclaimed aspect of the film.[3]
The overall critical reaction to the movie was somewhat negative. It scored a 33% rating on Rotten Tomatoes out of 140 reviews. Many reviewers noted striking similarities to First Blood. Rolling Stone called it "Just a Rambo rehash,"[4] while Rex Reed of the New York Observer called it a "Ludicrous, plotless, ho-hum tale of lurid confrontation."[5] The UK magazine, Total Film said the film was "scarcely exciting to watch."[6]
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."[7] He reviewed the film on his own site and scored it 3 and 1/2 stars out of four.[8] 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."[9]
The box office for the film was less than its reported production budget of $55 million.[10] 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.[11] It went on to gross $34,244,097 domestically and $11,252,437 from foreign markets for a worldwide total of $45,496,534.[10]
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