Any movie that begins with Johnny Cash waxing biblical over the
soundtrack can’t be all bad. Note the word “all” in that previous
sentence.
William Friedkin’s new actioner “The Hunted” is a lean, mean
chase flick with a lot to say that never actually gets said, at
least not coherently. At its best in moments of quiet close-ups and
flourishes of brutal combat, the film has a stark charm that almost
compensates for the inadequacies of its underdeveloped script.
Still, with a brisk 94-minute running time, “The Hunted” never
wears out its hard-earned welcome.
Aaron Hallam (Benicio Del Toro) is a government-trained assassin
who cannot re-adjust to quiet life back in the States when his tour
of duty reaches its bloody conclusion. A ticking time bomb of
violence, Hallam stalks through the woods of the Pacific Northwest
dispatching a handful of innocent victims in a most grisly fashion
(knives may be the real action star in this one). Who you gonna
call? Former FBI man L.T. Bonham (Tommy Lee Jones), of course, who
trained Hallam to do all the deadly things that he does so well.
Bonham, currently a deep-woods tracker in the frosty north (and you
can just bet he’ll be using that expertise later on, can’t ya?) is
recruited to track down his former pupil and bring Hallam’s rampage
to an end. Chases and knife fights ensue.
Friedkin has done this type of film before and he moves things
along very effectively from one action moment to the next. The last
twenty minutes of the film is little more than an extended chase,
taking its characters through the suburbs, underground, and
eventually back into the wilderness. Friedkin also seems to relish
a climactic battle between Jones and Del Toro, which is filmed with
an almost fetishistic eye for knife-play (and gore!). The action is
handled in a terse, no-nonsense style that works well for the
material, but Friedkin fumbles the ball in the few scenes without
running and spurting blood. He does, however, know how to lens an
entertaining film and also seems to know when he is starting to lay
it on a bit too thick.
It is refreshing to see a film of this type where the loony’s
mental condition has not been stripped down to numbingly bare
jargon and clinical mumbo-jumbo. So many movies try to pigeonhole
their characters’ crossed wires into tidy studies on various types
of mental unrest, usually ending with some illuminating and
ultimately tragic ending in which the audience (sadder but wiser)
has learned to pity the tortured character and, almost always, gain
a greater awareness for said character’s debilitating condition.
While “The Hunted” does hint at the cause of Hallam’s unraveling,
it never succumbs to putting a name to it. Nor do the screenplay or
Friedkin (or even Del Toro) try to make the audience feel sorry for
Hallam.
This actually leads to discussion of one of the movie’s
intrinsic flaws. The audience is not interested in Hallam. He’s not
a good guy (that’s Jones’s department), but he is also not a bad
guy, which makes it very hard to root against him. He’s just a man
who’s lost his way, abandoned by the system that bred him for
murder and couldn’t turn off the switch when the time came for him
to go home. A movie this high on mano-a-mano brutality needs a
clear hero and a clear villain; it fails when it tries to be more
than the straightforward action movie it should be. It is also a
mistake to saddle Hallam with obligatory “crazy” dialogue like,
“What if there was an animal higher than us on the food chain? And
what if this suddenly lost all respect for us and started
slaughtering us wholesale?” If the audience doesn’t know Hallam has
crossed the line the instant he slaughters two innocent (if
annoying) deer hunters, something is wrong that cannot be righted
by an over-baked monologue.
There is also a feeling of slightness when the film is over, the
feeling that the material was given a once-over and submitted for
public display before it was properly thought out and spliced
together. The script seems to be reaching for a message about
violence and the fallacy of a society training men to kill in the
name of peace that it can never quite attain. If any message is
still decipherable, it is a muddled one, and not a very convincing
one. Isn’t Bonham after all using the same techniques to defuse
Hallam?
Perhaps the films greatest strengths are its stars. Del Toro
mumbles and scowls his way through a few lackluster dialogue
scenes, but he really comes alive in the moments when his
physicality and especially his eyes are required to do all the
talking. Jones dusts off a familiar role and fills it with enough
subtle physical touches (pacing, wringing hands, etc.) and interior
nuances to make it seem new. Together the two have a nice
intensity, and their combined force grounds this film in
much-needed reality.
Despite its problems, “The Hunted” is a good ride, albeit a
shallow one. If graphic violence and surly testosterone aren’t your
cup of tea, avoid this one like the plague. If you’re into cool
weaponry and well-filmed action, you could do a lot worse. Just
don’t expect to remember this one at the year’s end.