The Hunted (March 13/03)

Though The Hunted often resembles one of those made-for-TBS thrillers that tend to star folks like Dean Cain and Rob Estes, it never quite sinks down to the level of pure cheese due primarily to Benicio Del Toro's completely off-the-wall (but tremendously entertaining) performance. Like Marlon Brando in The Island of Dr. Moreau, Del Toro seems to realize that he's in a lame thriller and has evidently decided to just have fun hamming it up.

The film opens in 1999, and the war in Kosovo is in full swing. A small group of elite American soldiers have been sent in to assassinate a high-ranking Serbian soldier, including Aaron Hallam (Del Toro). Though Hallam successfully carries out the mission, his psyche is seemingly damaged beyond repair and now lives in the forest offing hapless hunters. Noted tracker L.T. Bonham (Tommy Lee Jones) is brought in to capture Hallam - who just happens to have been his student years ago.

The most surprising thing about The Hunted is how entertaining it winds up being, despite being filled to the brim with silly cliches and wholly underdeveloped characters. Director William Friedkin (who has apparently decided to make a career out of making stupid thrillers, though this is nowhere near as bad as Jade) keeps the pace brisk and as expected, makes good use out of real-life locations. If nothing else, the film deserves kudos for actually placing Jones in a wintery forest instead of an artificial-looking set. And the requisite car chase (this is a Friedkin flick, after all) does have a certain amount of creativity to it - Hallam finds himself stuck in traffic and essentially turns the crowded street into a game of bumper cars. But no matter how effective the direction or actors may be, it's not enough to compensate for an incredibly poor screenplay. The film is filled with virtually every single action-movie cliche (someone actually refers to Hallam as a "killing machine," for crying out loud!), so it's as if the three writers sat down and watched a bunch of Van Damme and Schwarzenegger movies before getting started. The chase sequences between Jones and Del Toro are flat-out ludicrous, since Del Toro is supposed have this amazing ability for receding into the night - but he always makes his getaway into the most obvious places possible. Every time Jones loses him, he just has to look around for a second and there's Del Toro running away. Even more bizarre than that is the way Jones always manages to beat the FBI to Del Toro's location - even though he's on foot and they're in cars and helicopters.

And then, of course, there's Del Toro's hilariously over-the-top performance. Del Toro turns what could've just been another run-of-the-mill psycho into a completely intriguing and utterly fascinating person, to the extent that the movie comes to a dead halt whenever he's off screen. Del Toro's never exactly been a low-key actor (check out his barely comprehensible performance in The Usual Suspects for proof), but here, his oddball quirks are out in full force. His speech about what the world would be like if chickens were the dominant species is worth the price of admission alone. Jones doesn't fare quite as well, but not many actors would had they been forced to act opposite Del Toro. Still, it was interesting that he didn't fall back on his now patented tough authority figure - he's essentially been doling out the same performance ever since his Oscar win for The Fugitive.

At best, The Hunted is a decent actioner with some surprisingly effective hand-to-hand combat sequences and a beyond memorable performance from Del Toro. At worst, though, it's a cliched amalgam of virtually every action flick over the last 20 years.