Benicio Del Toro, Connie Nielsen, Eddie Velez

William Friedkin's taut direction highlights The Hunted, a bloodsport thriller that works best without dialogue. It's a prime vehicle for costars Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro, whose rug...( read more  read more... )ged screen personas are perfectly matched in a manhunt between a military assassin and the man who trained him to kill. Traumatized by atrocities in Kosovo four years earlier (the site of an action-packed prologue), Hallam (Del Toro) is seemingly psychotic and now killing in the forests of Oregon; Bonham (Jones) is lured out of retirement by a tenacious FBI agent (Connie Nielsen) to end Hallam's murder spree. The hackneyed plot is derivative to a fault (no surprise from the screenwriters of Collateral Damage), and the whole movie's a foregone conclusion, but Friedkin inspires fine work from his well-trained stars while exploring the ambiguity of Hallam's character. Lushly photographed by Caleb Deschanel, The Hunted is a survivalist's dream, militarily authentic and most effective when its primal instincts are cinematically expressed. --Jeff Shannon

Flixster Users

54% liked it

12,464 ratings

Critics

31% liked it

142 critics

R, 94 min.

Directed by: William Friedkin

Release Date: March 14, 2003

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DVD Release Date: August 12, 2003

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Flixster Reviews (1,094)


  • September 24, 2009
    Started so well but turned into a poor man?s U.S. Marshals towards the end. Disappointing!
  • September 22, 2008
    Tense. Good.
  • May 3, 2008
    The Hunted was to me an unimpressive film that I feel like I almost wasted my time seeing. Even with one of my fave actors, Belicio Del Toro, that doesn't change the fact that the overall movie was extremely disappointing.

    The plot was dull and completely explained, pro...( read more)bably the thing I hated the most about this flick was the way that it almost felt like it skipped a few minutes going from each scene. One minute one of the characters is in a certain place and the next they suddenly appear somewhere completely different. Another thing is that this film is in no way realistic with some of the events that occur. I found my self constantly thinking 'How did that happen?', 'How did he get there?', 'Why didn't this happen?' etc. I wasn't expecting complete realism but I think they could have at least considered the obvious ones.

    Benicio Del Toro gave a truly electrifying and brilliant performance though, he saved this film from a much lower rating. Tommy Lee Jones looked extremely awkward for his role, for me it just didn't work. Connie Nielsen was worse than average, another role I wouldn't have expected.

    Please try and avoid this if you can, I have warned you. But if you're looking for an action flick with absolutely no real plot and some pretty shameful moments for some otherwise great actors.. go for this.
  • April 24, 2008
    Aaron Hallam: If you cross this line, you better be ready to kill me.

    A chase movie with lots of bloody action.

    In way of plot, the movie doesn't get to detailed. Benicio Del Toro is a special forces soldier running amok in the woods and Tommy Lee Jones, his former trainer, is...( read more) brought in to bring him down. Easy enough, but it is made better by up close and personal knife fights.

    Director William Friedkin brings a visceral quality to the very tense one on one scenes involving the fight scenes.

    It also helps that the scenery looks terrific, taking place mainly in a forest setting. Then there's Connie Nielson in a supporting role and enough rugged looks from both Jones and Del Toro.

    L.T.: He's unusual. He can kill anybody without regret. Most of the people he killed never knew he was in the same room as them.
  • March 7, 2008
    nothing special
  • October 22, 2009
    Pretty good story, sweet fight scenes, and of course, Del Toro and Jones are both awesome. Great action flick.

    ** review to be continued **
  • October 17, 2009
    The film opens in 1999, with the war in Kosovo in full swing. A small group of elite American soldiers, including Aaron Hallam (Del Toro), have been sent in to assassinate a high-ranking Serbian soldier. Though Hallam successfully carries out the mission, his psyche is seemingly ...( read more)damaged beyond repair, and he now lives in the forest offing hapless hunters. Noted tracker L.T. Bonham (Tommy Lee Jones) is brought in to capture Hallam, who just happens to have been his student years ago.
  • October 14, 2009
    awesome movie ... a must see lots of action
  • September 7, 2009
    mean as how he was taught how to make shit and like th hand to hand combat parts...
  • August 12, 2009
    alrite it just seemed kinda pointless. theyre chasing after some wildman who lives n a forest...yipee. mayb if it had bigger stars n it id lyk it bttr idk

Critic Reviews


May 4, 2005
Nick Schager, Lessons of Darkness

Be prepared to endure pounds of painful preposterousness in return for the film's pint-sized pleasures. full review

March 14, 2003
Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times

The Hunted serves mostly as a reminder that three Academy Award winners are as capable of making a silly movie as anyone. full review

March 14, 2003
Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

Technically, it's well made, but it wasn't worth making. full review

March 14, 2003
Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer

The Hunted isn't exactly fraught with psychological depth and nuance, but as a stalker-stalkee suspenser, the pic has some nice things going for it. full review

March 14, 2003
Ty Burr, Boston Globe

The sight of Jones expending his sizable acting chops on this piece of macho blowhard fluff is distressing only if you can't relax and appreciate The Hunted on a camp level, where it functions quite h... full review

March 14, 2003
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

What makes the movie fresh is that it doesn't stand back and regard its pursuit as an exercise, but stays very close to the characters and focuses on the actual physical reality of their experience. full review

March 12, 2003
Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

Just a Rambo rehash. full review

View more The Hunted reviews at RottenTomatoes.com

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