Surprisingly incoherent and boring

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Aaron Hallam (Del Toro) is a Kosovo veteran and also an unstoppable killing machine. When the mentally unstable Hallam returns home to Oregon, he continues his killing spree. This grabs the attention of FBI Special Agent Abby Durrell (Nielsen), who wants to stop him. As it turns out, this particular unhinged maniac was trained by a survival expert and knife maestro named L.T. Bonham (Jones). He's not lieutenant Bonham, he's L.T. Bonham, as he does point out he never was actually in the military, he just used his expertise to train the recruits. Feeling guilty that his star student is now on the rampage, Bonham comes out of retirement to do one last track, which inevitably leads into the final teacher-versus-student knife fight...but who really is THE HUNTED? Maybe we'll all find out together...It's First Blood (1982) meets The Fugitive (1993) meets White Ghost (1988) as Tommy Lee Jones puts on his grizzled hat once again. This was towards the beginning of what came to be known as the GeriAction trend in Hollywood, where an older generation of actors - within a certain range, mind you - wanted to try a few last punches and kicks before they kicked off this mortal coil. Everyone from Clint Eastwood to Liam Neeson to Sean Penn have tried it lately with varying degrees of success. As anyone who reads this site knows, we almost always root for the older guys. We hate young punks and we cheer when they lose. All that being said, I think it's fair to expect more of the great director William Friedkin than what we get here. It's all so simple, paint-by-numbers, one-dimensional even. Some guy is on the loose and Tommy Lee Jones is "Hunting" him. Is it wrong to want just a bit more meat on the bone than that? It feels like you've seen a lot of this before - just the images of Tommy Lee Jones in front of a waterfall will remind you of the aforementioned Fugitive. And a former military man with a knife that the authorities are chasing in the Pacific Northwest wilderness should bring to mind a certain Stallone movie series that we all know and love. They had enough time for the clichés we've all seen before, but somehow they couldn't find the time for some character development or human drama. They even fell back on the tired "Vietnam vet goes crazy" scenario, which could certainly be argued is insensitive, if not insulting. But we may not have noticed if that hadn't been done so many times before. The only difference is now it's Kosovo, not Vietnam. We would think that by 2003 Hollywood would have used up every last drop of that trope, but no, apparently not.This is one time that we can think of that we can't necessarily sign off on approving an 88-minute running time, like we usually do. Evidently there was more character development left on the cutting room floor. While we appreciate the sentiment to try to make the movie lean and mean, a couple more dialogue scenes that might have fleshed out the characters or explained their motivations would have gone a long way. It would have helped the audience care more about the Bonham-Hallam relationship, which would have increased the suspense. The filmmakers also seemed ambivalent about Connie Nielsen's character - they should have given her more screen time or axed her altogether. As it stands, she's just kinda there. We would have opted for more Nielsen, as her run on Law & Order: SVU were some of the best episodes of that series to date. The Hunted could have used a tough female, Dani Beck-like character.Looking at the movie a mere twelve years later (TWELVE years have passed since this came out? Maybe it's not so mere after all), it's hard to believe it got a theater release. If this was released today it would go DTV or on-demand, almost certainly. While it does contain the appropriate amount of action and violence - we even get some classic Tommy Lee Jones-Fu, or, to be more accurate, a Filipino fighting style called Sayoc Kali - it's hard to shake the feeling something is missing here. Perhaps we should hire L.T. Bonham to hunt it down...but then we'd be right back to where we started, wouldn't we?

An FBI deep-woods tracker captures a trained assassin who has made a sport of hunting humans.With all due respect to director William Friedkin, he has a record that is less than consistent. Back in the 1970s, he blew everyone away with "The Exorcist" and "The French Connection". After that, it has been up and down. I really liked "Bug", but it seemed to go largely under the radar.This one is less than perfect. It starts off okay, and the concept is good, but as it goes on, the acting seems to get worse and worse. How does that happen? Even Benicio del Toro, who is a pretty decent actor, just sort of falls apart. That makes me a sad panda.

Traumatized by an event in Kosovo, a specially trained assassin by the name of "Aaron Hallam" (Benicio Del Toro) deserts and secretly takes refuge in the forests of Oregon. Unfortunately, having gone completely insane he subsequently kills and dismembers some deer hunters who he believes are agents sent to either bring him back or kill him. This results in the FBI getting involved and a request for the assistance of the man who trained him named "L. T. Bonham" (Tommy Lee Jones). What the FBI doesn't realize is just how effective and vicious Aaron has become. Now rather than reveal any more of this film and risk spoiling it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that people who enjoy action movies with little regard for reality will probably love this particular picture. Admittedly, there were several parts which were entertaining. But other parts were so totally unbelievable that I found it quite difficult to accept in a serious manner. Only in Hollywood. Likewise, although I liked the presence of Connie Nielsen (as FBI agent "Abby Durrell"), I thought Tommy Lee Jones wasn't quite suited for his particular role and that factored into my overall rating as well. Slightly below average.

What happens when you combine these films: Predator, First Blood, and the Fugitive? Well, you get this thriller: The Hunted. Now while the Hunted may seem derivative (it pretty much is), it still is a good time and it's a reasonably entertaining, straightforward thriller which is like a cat and mouse game. This film is not short on the action as we witness some great knife battles, a climatic ending, and lots of graphic violence.William Friedkin's film is about a former ops named Aaron Hallam who has gone rogue after witnessing events in Kosovo. Hallam is wanted for the vicious murders of two businessmen as he tries to avoid being captured. But the FBI calls in his former assassins trainer, L.T Bonham to help them track Hallam down.Tommy Lee Jones is a great actor, but he wasn't convincing here as he should have been. This was just a ripoff of his Fugitive performance, and I'm still deciding whether that is good or not. He still has his charisma and grace though. Benicio Del Toro did do a great job as the vicious Hallam whose best friend is his stealth. Finally, Connie Nielsen was okay as the FBI agent, but I'm not sure if I could buy her performance.Overall, The Hunted is an entertaining, "cat and mouse" thriller that is highlighted by some excellent knife scenes. While the film is not short on action or gore, it does lack an excellent screenplay, which perhaps hindered the acting. But this film does have a good technical side as it has great editing and great cinematography. In other words, this film made it feel I was in the Pacific Northwest as well. I rate this film 8/10.