Talk:The Hunted (1995 film)

Errors in the Present Version of this Article (as of 2011-09-21)
I am reluctant to make changes to the article myself, but I just watched this movie -- twice -- on MoviePlex On Demand on Comcast, and then promptly came on-line to look it up here on Wikipedia. When I did, I was surprised to find several errors and discrepancies:

(1) The Takeda family compound or stronghold is located on an island; everyone arrives by boat. It is a hilly and wooded island, to be sure, but it is not "in the mountains."

(To get to the unnamed island, they take the bullet train from Nagoya to Mihara, some 360 km or 224 miles away. From Mihara they take a boat.  The mountains of Japan are far inland and to the north of the bullet train, not off the coast and to the south.)

(2) Most of the passengers on the train survive the ninja attack, because Takeda and his wife send them to the rear of the train. Only the unlucky ones in the first two or three cars got butchered by the Makato clan's ninja raiding party. So the article's present statement "instead allowing the ninja to slaughter an entire train full of people" is just wrong.

(As an additional matter, at that point in the film it appears to the audience that the ninjas simply managed somehow to follow Racine (Christopher Lambert) to the Nagoya train station. Only later in the film is it suggested that Takeda may have sent them a message telling them where Racine would be.)

(3) Concerning the article's statement that "Paul manages to kill Kinjo - much to the satisfaction of Kinjo's third, who is now the leader of the ninja clan and withdraws the remaining ninjas citing that the endeavor is over":

In the version I saw, all of the ninja attackers besides Kinjo himself are killed in combat before the penultimate battle (which the article presently doesn't even mention!), which is between Kinjo and Takeda; Takeda kills the last two of them himself as his fight with Kinjo is about to begin. Thus, there are no other ninjas left on the island besides Kinjo himself by the time Kinjo has defeated Takeda and Racine shows up to fight Kinjo. And after Racine miraculously manages to defeat Kinjo (cutting off his head!), all we see is the arrival of the blacksmith Oshima, who has decided to return after previously making his escape from the island, and then the departure from the battle site of the three survivors -- Racine, Oshima, and Takeda's wife Mieko -- as they start to head up the hill toward the castle in the distance. There are no remaining ninjas, there is no withdrawal of remaining ninjas, and there is no third-in-command telling them to withdraw, or that their endeavor is over. After I read the Wikipedia article, I went back and watched the final scene a third time just to be sure!

However, the account I found here makes me suspect that the original (theatrical?) release of the movie may have contained additional footage that was edited out for cable, so I am reluctant to simply delete the apparently erroneous statement.

(FWIW, the version I saw was 110 minutes long (actually 109, plus a one-minute ad for MoviePlex at the beginning), but the article lists the running time as 111 minutes. IMDb says the film is only 106 minutes, but may not be including the credits.  Either way, if Wikipedia's figure of 111 minutes is accurate, than there may indeed have been some footage cut that was in the original.  I have no idea how Wikipedia articles are supposed to handle such a situation, but it sounds like we may have a bit of an alternate ending.)

(4) Concerning the article's statement that "He also spends time with Takeda's wife, from whom he learns the history of the two clans' conflict as well as the samurai concepts of courage and honor. During their time together, Mieko grows close to the gentle and compassionate Paul . . . .":

In the version I saw, she tells him about the conflict between the clans two centuries ago only briefly, as they first arrive at the island compound (the conversation actually starts on the boat), and they never have any discussion of courage or honor, or of any other samurai concepts. She is not shown having another conversation with him until after he has already been bound and imprisoned, a few hours before the final fight scene. They are shown spending time together before they arrive at the island (in the hospital, at the train station, on the boat), but not after, as the article's present wording indicates. (In contrast, he is shown having many interactions with the blacksmith over the course of his 3-week stay on the island.)

Is it possible the original release of the film had a bit more interaction between Mieko and Racine than appears in the version being offered on cable now? Or was some earlier author/editor of this article embellishing a bit?

76.114.95.207 (talk) 21:42, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

---

I decided to go ahead and make some of the changes I identified the need for above:


 * I changed the location of the Takeda clan stronghold from the mountains to an island, and indicated that only some of the train's passengers were killed, not all.


 * In keeping with a correction someone else made in one place but not another almost two years ago (December 28, 2009), I also deleted the remaining reference to Junko being Kinjo's second-in-command. (Real-life master swordsman Toshirô Obata's character, Ryuma, was depicted pretty clearly as Kinjo's second-in-command.  As the person making the changes two years ago noted, Junko might not even have been third.)  At the same time, I identified her more completely in both the Plot and Characters sections.


 * I added a brief account of the fight between Takeda and Kinjo -- possibly the best and most important fight in the movie, and an incredibly glaring omission previously.

(The final fight, between Kinjo and Paul, is the one most important to the story, of course, but the fight between Kinjo and Takeda is the one that involves the two most skillful and proficient swordsmen. Moreover, it also is crucial to the outcome of the fight between Kinjo and Paul.  If Takeda had not tired and injured Kinjo, it is highly unlikely that Paul would have lasted more than a few seconds in his own fight with Kinjo.)


 * I also added some other details to the last part of the Plot description, in order to better and more sensibly convey the flow and sequence of events.


 * In doing so, I also corrected an error I forgot to note previously: While many of Takeda's men were done in by the swarm of attacking ninjas (and the rest by Kinjo personally), Takeda himself most definitely was not.  If he had been, he would not have made it to his big showdown with Kinjo.


 * I deleted the clause about remaining ninjas leaving the island after Kinjo was killed by Paul, and Kinjo's third and successor being pleased that Paul had killed Kinjo, because no such material appears in the version of the movie I saw, and it is inconsistent with all of the footage of both the big showdown between Kinjo and Takeda, and the final battle, between Kinjo and Paul.

The version I saw shows what appear to be the last two ninjas besides Kinjo being killed just before the battle between Takeda and Kinjo begins (one by Takeda, and one by his wife Mieko), and no other ninjas appear during any part of either of the two final fight scenes. Surely if other ninjas were still on the island when Kinjo was still alive and fighting, as the statement I deleted implies, they would have come to their master's aid.

However, just in case there is an earlier version of the movie that really did have the scene previously described (which I seriously doubt), I did not add the fact that all of the other ninjas besides Kinjo, as much as all of Takedas underlings, were killed in the battle on the island -- even though that is what the version I saw shows. The article's text as it now stands, after my changes, is silent and therefore agnostic on this point.

(As a result, it gives the misleading impression that Kinjo's underlings kicked ass against Takeda's underlings, when in fact the underlings collectively are shown fighting more or less to a draw with each other. All die, on both sides.)


 * More generally, I did not correct, change or delete the editorializing and subjective commentary that one or more other, previous authors or editors had included.


 * Neither did I change or delete the assertions that Racine and Mieko spend time together while at the stronghold on the island, and discuss courage and honor, even though no such scenes appeared in the version of the movie I saw.

Here again, I suspect my predecessor simply was mistaken or inaccurate, just as he or she -- or someone else -- was about the stronghold being "in the mountains." However, a brief conversation about clan history did occur between Mieko and Racine, and Mieko clearly did care for Racine and perhaps even grow closer to him (she cared for his safety from the outset), so what was written before seems close enough.


 * I changed hyphens to dashes, and "different than" to "different from."

76.114.95.207 (talk) 17:00, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

The cast thing
Continuing from article history: The fact that Gone with the Wind, a GA, doesn't name actors in plot section, goes to show that this is optional. However, the actors are named in plot sections of countless movies, many of which have passed GA and FA reviews and some of which (including this one) have been brought to that status by me. Moreover, I think it benefits the readers by making it easier for them to form a mental picture of what's going on in the film, and to ease matching smaller roles with the corresponding actors without having to scroll back and forth between plot and cast sections. In films with prominent actors playing roles with unmemorable names, this really helps me when reading, as I'm sure it does a lot of people, which is why I've included it here.  Daß &thinsp;  Wölf  02:10, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Correct year: 1994 vs 1995
Many websites have this movie down as a 1994 movie. Any explanation as to why? Without so much as a mention of this issue it's hard to confidently assume it's a 1995 movie. People turn to Wikipedia to check what's the accurate year, but without any mention in the Talk page people can't be confident our version is right... 86.148.254.58 (talk) 18:15, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * It could be that they're putting 1994 because that's the year it was made, however it's the date a film is released that determines what year it is given. The original U.S. release date was February 24, 1995. More release dates can be found here: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113360/releaseinfo?ref_=tt_ov_infChanbara (talk) 18:40, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
 * It might be confusion with https://www.worldcat.org/title/hunted/oclc/34218547 -- the most prominent site listing this film as released in 1994 is Rotten Tomatoes, which already did a hack job with the film's reviews.  Daß &thinsp;  Wölf  19:31, 7 May 2019 (UTC)