I don’t think I’ve wanted to rewrite a movie more. I want a time machine to go back to the early 2000s, steal the final shooting script for William Friedkin’s The Hunted, and tear it apart and put it back together because there’s a really interesting movie in here. It’s hidden by a terrible structure, overbearing and kind of incomprehensible allusions to the Bible, and character work that doesn’t really connect, implying to me that the original script actually might have gotten watered down during both production and editing, but the basic ideas of the overall film and even its structure, what’s left in the final product that is, implies something far more interesting that what we got.
I kept thinking of Friedkin’s Sorcerer as this was playing. This is nothing like Sorcerer, mind you, but the forest setting (in the Pacific Northwest rather than in the sweltering jungles of Central America) and what should have been a simple plot (there’s busyness around it, but it’s still pretty simple) implied the need for a similar storytelling approach: spare, minimalist, and tense. That’s not what the script by David and Peter Griffiths and Art Monterastelli delivers, though. Apparently the script by the two Griffiths was a really hot commodity before Lakeshore and Paramount secured funding around Friedkin’s direction, so it makes you wonder why anyone would bring in Monterastelli to make modifications. Well, it’s common, but whatever the script changes were, whatever got altered during production, and whatever got moved around during editing I think made the final product less than what it could have been.
So, the story should be super simple: Aaron Hallam (Benicio del Toro) is an army sergeant who has become violent in the forests outside of Portland, Oregon, killing four hunters brutally with his knife. The authorities bring in L.T. Bonham (Tommy Lee Jones) to track him down and bring him in. L.T. trained Aaron at some point in the past to teach him to survive and kill in close combat (the flashbacks demonstrating this feel so limited that they end up making the relationship feel small rather than large, like I think it’s supposed to be). L.T. leads the authorities, led by FBI agent Abby Durrell (Connie Nielsen), to Aaron who catch him, take him back to Portland, where he escapes again and retreats back to the woods while L.T. tracks him from the office to their final confrontation. There’s extra stuff in there about some shadowy government agents taking Aaron away from the FBI because he’s extralegal and does not fall under regular law, and stuff, and Aaron visiting a woman, Irene (Leslie Stefanson), but it honestly feels like padding to draw out the running time.
The story as presented is thin and competent. It’s the largest production of Friedkin’s career, and it honestly kind of feels like he got lost in it, never losing his ability to shoot a scene but completely losing where he was in the story at any given moment because he has to capture the next action-thriller set piece. We understand the movements, but the movements end up feeling random and staccato rather than like a smooth progression of events. This becomes extremely evident when Aaron is at Irene’s house, Abby and L.T. show up at the door, and it honestly feels like the kind of scene that starts a film, not moves it from the second to the third act. It’s oddly built, flabby in some areas and too tight in others.
It also feels like something of a reaction to Rules of Engagement where the central antagonist is another military man who has gone too far, but this time, it is right and justified to bring him in and stop him.
The character stuff ends up feeling underdeveloped as well. A big part of that is the actual footage from the flashback which is never more than L.T. training Aaron specific killing moves, never portraying them in any sort of familial light, undermining the whole Johnny Cash narrated stuff about Abraham and Isaac. When the two are actually together in the “now” period, it’s all heavy implication about their past relationship or business about the need for Aaron to turn himself in and such. I don’t think it works terribly well. What works is the action stuff, and Friedkin dips into his documentary background again, like in The French Connection or the Yemeni battle in Rules of Engagement to give us a competently captured series of chases through the forests both urban and natural.
What would I have done? Stripped out most of the dialogue, Irene, and most of the FBI agents. This is a two (if you’re being generous, three) person story, and the focus needs to rest there firmly. Also, the structure needs to be ironed out. There’s too much time set in the prologue in Serbia, the opening search in the forests is truncated, and the middle section in Portland is muddled with all of the covert business. Three acts: the first in the forest, the second in Portland, the third back in the forest. Imply the relationship without making anything explicit, cutting out the flashbacks completely, and rely on the actors to deliver the emotions in small beats necessary. I think you could keep the Abraham and Isaac stuff then, providing a nice motif and thematic flair to the action without providing textual information that actually undermines it.
So, it’s not bad, but I don’t think it comes near its potential. As a delivery vehicle for some well-filmed thrills, it’s decent, crescendoing with the final battle along the river that’s pretty brutal and works decently well. Jones is a better actor than del Toro here, though Jones is still pretty much limited to folksy seriousness, but he knows how to apply it well. Del Toro has more demanded of him, and he seems to strain a bit in his second language, which is unfortunate.
I mean, it’s fine as a light thriller, but it could have been so much more.
Rating: 2/4
David Vining, Author 