Revealing the bond between these two men almost entirely without words, Friedkin first introduces Aaron Hallam (Benicio Del Toro) in 1999, during the bloodiest of the fighting in Kosovo. Serbian soldiers are carrying out scores of atrocities against Albanian civilians while U.S. Special Forces operate covertly nearby. Aaron -- at this time a soldier in good standing -- penetrates a demolished building and slips unseen past guards. As he moves without a sound, there is a tense moment when the path to his target is blocked by a small child praying over her mother’s dead body.
But Aaron is so skilled at melting into the shadows that the Serbian officer who has ordered all this butchery has no clue anyone is even in the room until Aaron has killed him. Awarded the Silver Star for valor for this murder, Aaron feels no honor as he lies awake, tormented by nightmares.
In 2003, light years from what happened in Kosovo, we meet L.T. Bonham (Tommy Lee Jones) tracking an injured wolf through the bright snows of northernmost British Columbia. He runs with the rubbery, bandy-legged gait of a professional tracker, not making a sound, soft on the soles of his feet. This, along with his gentle demeanor, allows him to approach the suffering animal. Once he undoes the trap and treats the wolf’s wound, the outraged L.T. marches into the nearest tavern and gives a beating to the man who set the trap.
L.T.’s former student, Aaron Hallam -- now AWOL from the Special Forces -- keeps his own brand of wildlife vigil. With catlike reflexes, he pounces on two hunter's using rifles with high-powered military telescopes to kill the deer, brutally, killing them with animal-like swiftness.
But these are not his only victims. In fact, Aaron has viciously killed two other hunters in the area, and the FBI, led by Special Agent Abby Durrell (Connie Nielsen), desperate to track down the killer, calls in the one man who can bring him in.
Snug in retirement, L.T. resists the mission. He’s closed off the past and this would only open everything up again. But after studying photos of how the men were gutted like deer, L.T. knows the killer is a man he has trained. Accepting the assignment on the condition he works alone, L.T. walks into the woods unarmed, as if tracking another wounded wolf. His final words: "If I’m not back in two days, it’ll mean I’m dead."
(43 votes)
2.
Some men must be found.
Haunted by the nightmares of killing he experiences in Kosovo in the past, Aaron Hallam, has turned into a top special-forces assassin... gone renegade. And when game hunters in the Pacific Northwest are being targeting and viciously slain, the FBI realizes that the indiscriminate murders are the work of no ordinary thrill killer. They turn to the one man who can track Hallam down and bring him in - skilled former warfare instructor L.T. Bonham. Bonham is grimly familiar with the killer's deadly techniques - he personally trained Hallam, his most skilled student. Now the seasoned teacher must engage his talented pupil in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse, with a playing field that moves from Oregon's rural wilderness to the concrete jungle of the city. Watch this and discover why some men must be found.
(38 votes)
3.
Director William Friedkin gave us a cop pushing hard against the criminal element deep within himself in the classic crime thriller "The French Connection." He enhanced the meaning of "devil" for an entire generation and gave us a rare look at a man of God fighting a malignant force by admitting that he, too, was sinful in "The Exorcist." And in "To Live and Die in L.A.," he locked a single-minded cop and a career criminal into a power struggle that mapped the hypocrisies of their entire society.
Now, in "The Hunted," Friedkin explores man's inner conflict over his own evils in the most primal, elemental way, by telling the story of a retired teacher of warfare (Tommy Lee Jones) who must battle his former student (Benicio Del Toro), a top special-forces assassin gone renegade.
Paramount Pictures presents, in association with Lakeshore Entertainment, a Ricardo Mestres/Alphaville Production. A William Friedkin Film starring Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro, "The Hunted" also features Connie Nielson, Leslie Stefanson, John Finn, Jose Zuniga, Ron Canada, Mark Pellegrino and Lonny Chapman. The film is directed by William Friedkin and written by David Griffiths & Peter Griffiths and Art Monterastelli. Ricardo Mestres and James Jacks serve as producers. The executive producers are David Griffiths, Peter Griffiths, Marcus Viscidi and Sean Daniel and the co-producer is Art Monterastelli.
Paramount Pictures is part of the entertainment operations of Viacom Inc., one of the world's largest entertainment and media companies, and a leader in the production, promotion and distribution of entertainment news, sports and music.
William Friedkin's taut direction highlights The Hunted, a bloodsport thriller that works best without dialogue. It's a prime vehicle for costars Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro, whose rugged screen personas are perfectly matched in a manhunt between a military assassin and the man who trained him to kill. Traumatized by atrocities in Kosovo four years earlier (the site of an action-packed prologue), Hallam (Del Toro) is seemingly psychotic and now killing in the forests of Oregon; Bonham (Jones) is lured out of retirement by a tenacious FBI agent (Connie Nielsen) to end Hallam's murder spree. The hackneyed plot is derivative to a fault (no surprise from the screenwriters of Collateral Damage), and the whole movie's a foregone conclusion, but Friedkin inspires fine work from his well-trained stars while exploring the ambiguity of Hallam's character. Lushly photographed by Caleb Deschanel, The Hunted is a survivalist's dream, militarily authentic and most effective when its primal instincts are cinematically expressed. --Jeff Shannon
(24 votes)
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