150 Word Review: 'The Hunted' (2003)
Slice of life
The Hunted is one of director William Friedkin’s lesser works. It’s not The French Connection or Sorcerer. It is, however, a modest, bloody thriller about a highly trained military commando gone rogue and his teacher, pulled out of retirement to hunt him down.
Benicio Del Toro stars as the super soldier, smoldering in an underwritten role. But this is Tommy Lee Jones’ movie. He plays L.T., a grizzled manly man who once moonlighted as a freelance murder instructor for the U.S. military.
Jones is in full action-movie mode here, even if he wears a tucked-in button-down while leaping and running. The close-quarters knife fights between Del Toro and Jones are genuinely brutal. During the climax, hunter and hunted stalk each other in a forest and take time to make their own knives, one carved from stone, the other a piece of metal heated and hammered. It’s silly. I loved it.
#ICYMI 150 Word Review: ‘The French Connection’ (1971)
