September 24, 2003 -- The Hunted is an action movie with a lot of talent behind it. The two main stars are Academy Award winners Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro. The director is the multi award-winning John Frankenheimer. So this ought to be a good film, but it isn't. It is just average, nothing to write home about. It is notable mainly because it may be the last film for which legendary country-western singer Johnny Cash performed.

Cash, who died within months after the film's release, narrates a passage from Bob Dylan's “Highway 61 Revisited” at the beginning of the film, and sings his own song “The Man Comes Around” over the closing credits of the film. Both performances are very evocative of the tragic, mournful theme of this movie. Dylan's song, which goes something like this, “God said Abraham kill me a son. Abe say no. God say what? The next time you see me coming you better run. Abe said where you want this killing done? God said out on Highway 61,” sets up the conflict between Jones and Del Toro in the film. The song, loosely based on the Bible chapter of Genesis 22 in which Abraham offers to kill his only son, Isaac, ties into the story, where the older, father figure, must hunt down his young protégé.

Jones plays L.T. Bonham, a retired military special operations trainer, who is called in to hunt down a rogue agent, Aaron Hallam (played by Benicio Del Toro). Hallam kills some hunters in Oregon after becoming mentally unglued due to a brutal assasination mission in Kosovo. Jones is the man who trained Hallam, and who also ignored his letters asking for help, so he feels a responsibility to bring Hallam to justice before he kills again. The rest of the film is a protracted chase with Bonham pursuing Jones in the thick forests of Oregon, as well as in urban jungles. The other characters in the film are superfluous.

The movie begins with a flashback to Kosovo, where Hallam went over the edge, and then goes to the wilds of Alaska, where Bonham frees a wolf from a cruel snare. He then goes on to punish the man who set the snare. We then go to Oregon where Hallam dispatches two hunters, but are they really hunters? They appear to be using some kind of military equipment, so they may be a special forces squad sent specifically to eliminate Hallam. Later on, more military forces are dispatched to kill Hallam, even though he is in custody, a clear violation of a number of laws. In the commentary track on the DVD of this film, it is clear that Frankenheimer thinks this kind of assassination of American citizens on American soil is something that happens in real life. It seems a bit far-fetched to me. Note also that Hallam's first name, Aaron, is a Biblical name (Aaron was the brother of Moses). This ties in with the Biblical theme from Bob Dylan's lyrics read at the beginning of the film by Johnny Cash. There is also an anti-technological philosophy embodied in the movie, where both of the lead actors are portrayed as noble savages, living by the law of the jungle. Those who rely on technology are powerless to stop them. The two go so far as to make their own weapons from stone and steel. There are echoes of the first “Rambo” movie here.

The action scenes, of which there are many, are well-staged. That includes a number of knife-fighting scenes, staged by a knife fighting expert who is profiled in the extra features of the DVD. There is an attempt to breathe life into the two main characters, but it falls short of what is needed to make this a compelling film. There is some background and motivation for these characters, but not enough to carry the audience through this long, wet, bloody, miserable, sad, tragic chase. It is a tolerable film, but it is not enlightening and it sure isn't entertaining. It is underwritten and it is a waste of a lot of good acting and directing talent. This film rates a C. The DVD is pretty good, it has a lot of extra features about the making of the film. If you liked this film, the DVD is probably worth having.

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Copyright © 2003 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
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