The Hunted

A survivalist (Tommy Lee Jones) is brought in to help capture a man (Benicio Del Toro) he trained, who is now killing civilians in the Oregon wilderness.

I bet the pitch for The Hunted went something like this: “It’s First Blood meets The Fugitive.” By First Blood, they mean a battle-stressed vet stalking around some Pacific-North wilderness, and by The Fugitive, they mean Tommy Lee Jones. Now, there’s two ways to put this scenario together: the right way, and the way this movie does it.

The Hunted starts off looking very stagey. It’s not until the action shifts to the Oregon wilderness that the movie shows any promise. These first scenes in the Pacific Northwest represent the right way to mix these concepts: Take Tommy Lee Jone’s character from the Fugitive and put him in the wilderness with Rambo and let the two play cat and mouse.

But no! 10 minutes later it’s all over and the movie decides it would be much better to take Rambo out of the woods and move him into The Fugitive’s setting: the city.

Here the movie really begins to flounder, as Rambo doesn’t have a one-armed man to find thus really has nothing to do in the city except lead Tommy Lee Jones on a pointless (and totally unbelievable) chase.

Twenty minutes or so after that it’s all over, and you’re left scratching your head wondering “What was the point?”