The Hunted (2003 film)

The Hunted is a 2003 American action thriller film directed by William Friedkin. It stars Tommy Lee Jones as a retired civilian contractor and SOF Trainer, who is tasked with tracking down a former student of his played by Benicio del Toro who has gone rogue; Connie Nielsen also stars.

The film was released on March 14, 2003. It received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $46 million against its $55 million budget.

Plot
The film begins with U.S Army Sergeant First Class Aaron Hallam, a member of Delta Force, fighting as part of a unit in the Kosovo War. He single-handedly assassinates a genocidal Serbian military leader, and is awarded a Silver Star. However, Hallam is left wracked with PTSD, combat stress reaction, and nightmares due to the atrocities he witnessed.

Years later, in Silver Falls State Park, Oregon, Hallam encounters two apparent deer hunters with expensive high-powered sniper rifles. He accuses them of not being genuine hunters due to using scopes and guns. The two men pursue him, but are outmatched by Aaron’s tactics and traps, and are brutally murdered.

Meanwhile, L.T. Bonham, a former civilian survival and combat instructor for spec ops soldiers, lives in a secluded cabin deep in British Columbia. He frees a white wolf from a snare trap, treating its injury, then locates and knocks out the man who set it in a bar, warning his friends not to use them again.

Sometime after, L.T. is approached by the FBI, who enlists his aid in apprehending the perpetrator of the killings. Bonham agrees and joins the FBI task force led by Abby Durrell. Arriving at the crime scene, he proves that one man with a knife was responsible for the hunters’s deaths, not several men with hatchets as previously believed by the agents. L.T. convinces Abby to let him track the killer on his own, but she insists that he take an FBI radio.

Bonham discovers Hallam's personal effects in a small cave just before the assassin appears, and recognizes him as one of his students. Hallam asks Bonham why he never answered the letters he sent, but L.T. demands to know why Aaron killed those hunters. His protege explains that he believes the men were “sweepers” sent by the government to eliminate him. Bonham fails to talk Hallam into surrendering, and the two come to blows before Hallam is tranquilized and taken into custody by the FBI who tracked L.T’s radio.

During his interrogation, Aaron is un-cooperative, rambling about the slaughter of chickens, and only wants to talk to Bonham, who urges him to remain silent about his black operations. L.T, when questioned by Abby, admits that his father (an Army Colonel) prevented him from joining the military after his brother died in the Vietnam War to avoid losing another son. He followed his Dad’s footsteps and took up tracking, before being contracted by the Armed Forces.

The FBI is then forced to hand Hallam over to three of his fellow JSOC operators led by Dale Hewitt, who arrives with a letter authorizing taking possession of the prisoner. Hewitt tells them that Hallam lost control during a post-Kosovo mission, killing numerous innocent civilians, and can’t stand trial because his military assignments are classified. While being transported, Aaron manages to kill the operatives and escape.

L.T. hears news of the crash and immediately travels to the scene along with the FBI. Bonham and Durell go to the house where Hallam’s former girlfriend, Irene Kravitz and her daughter Loretta reside, suspecting her of sheltering the fugitive. Abby tries to convince her to give him up, while Bonham discovers Aaron in an upstairs bedroom. The two have a tense stand off and stare-down, but he flees out of a window when Abby shows up to detain him. L.T. follows, and narrowly dodges a car Hallam steals from his partner’s garage. Later, Durell and Bonham discover Hallam’s effects in a wooden compartment, along with a letter accusing L.T. of sending men to kill him, confirming his paranoid mental state.

Relentlessly pursued by the FBI, Bonham, and the Portland Police Bureau, Hallam flees into a sewer, where he ambushes and kills Harry Van Zandt, Abby’s Boss, and her friend and partner Bobby Moret. He later hides on a Portland Streetcar. When L.T. boards it looking for him, Aaron takes a hostage at knifepoint in order to escape. He climbs to the top of a bridge and when cornered by a helicopter, leaps into the river below.

Abby, devastated and wanting revenge for her fallen colleagues, intends to deploy the full force of the FBI into the woods in search of Hallam. Bonham protests this, asserting that sending more agents after Hallam will only result in further bloodshed, and unsuccessfully argues that he is the only one who can stop the renegade soldier he trained.

Resurfacing upstream, Hallam crafts a knife out of reclaimed metal, as Bonham taught him. Meanwhile, L.T. crafts a knife out of stone and enters the wilderness alone to find Aaron. Bonham is caught by one of Hallam's traps and is thrown down a waterfall. He meets Aaron at the bottom, and they engage in hand-to-hand combat. The two sustain severe injuries, and L.T.’s knife is broken, but he gains the upper hand and fatally stabs Hallam in the heart with his own knife just as Durell and the FBI arrive.

Bonham, mostly recovered, returns to his home in British Columbia. He rereads and then burns Hallam's aforementioned letters that express his concerns over what he experienced during his service. The movie ends with L.T. standing on his porch and staring out into the snow-covered forest.

Production
The film was partially filmed in and around Portland, Oregon and Silver Falls State Park. Portland scenes were filmed in Oxbow Park, the South Park Blocks, the Columbia Blvd Treatment Plant, and Tom McCall Waterfront Park. The technical adviser for the film was Tom Brown Jr., an American outdoorsman and wilderness survival expert. The story is partially inspired by a real-life incident involving Brown, who was asked to track down a former pupil and Special Forces sergeant who had evaded capture by authorities. This story is told in Tom's book, Case Files Of The Tracker. Chapter 2 of this book, "My Frankenstein," describes Brown's tracking and fight with a former special operations veteran.

The hand-to-hand combat and knife fighting in the film featured Filipino Martial Arts. Thomas Kier and Rafael Kayanan of Sayoc Kali were brought in by Benicio del Toro. They were credited as knife fight choreographers for the film.

Box office
The box office for the film was less than its reported production budget of $55 million. The Hunted opened on March 14, 2003, at #3 in 2,516 theaters across North America and grossed $13.48 million during its opening weekend. It went on to gross $34,244,097 in North America and $11,252,437 internationally markets for a worldwide total of $45,496,534.

Buena Vista International handles the distribution in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Netherlands and parts of Latin America.

Columbia TriStar Film Distributors International handles Finnish & Swedish theatrical distribution through its then distribution partner Nordisk Film.

In United Kingdom - Redbus Film Distribution handles distribution under the name Helkon SK. It was released on 6 June 2003 (despite being renamed to Redbus on 6 May 2003).

Critical response
Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale.

Many reviewers noted striking similarities to First Blood, with which this film was unfavorably compared. Rolling Stone called it "Just a Rambo rehash." While there was some praise for the cinematography and the action scenes, much criticism was directed at the thin plot and characterization, and the general implausibility. Rex Reed of the New York Observer called it a "Ludicrous, plotless, ho-hum tale of lurid confrontation." The UK magazine, Total Film said the film was "scarcely exciting to watch."

However, the film also received praise from other high-profile critics, particularly for the fact it kept the special effects and stunts restrained. For example, Roger Ebert said, "We've seen so many fancy high-tech computer-assisted fight scenes in recent movies that we assume the fighters can fly. They live in a world of gravity-free speed-up. Not so with Friedkin's characters." He reviewed the film on his own site and scored it 3 1/2 out of 4 stars. Time Out London was also positive saying, "Friedkin's lean, mean thriller shows itself more interested in process than context, subtlety and character development pared away in favour of headlong momentum and crunching set pieces."