March 4, 2004

• Movie review:

  
  

  The Hunted

  
  

  a film by William Friedkin

  
  

  My getting to see this was serendipity, indeed.  I usually either watch or ignore whatever videos Greyfox brings home.  I’d never heard of this flick.  When Greyfox went to the general store today his plan was to get a new release, since today is 99-cent day.  He was looking for Bad Boys II, A Mighty Wind, or Johnny English.  When he came in with The Hunted, he said he had gone for it, “on the strength of the cast.”  Later, he admitted that he’d previously seen something about the film in one of his knife magazines.

  
  

  Knives feature prominently in the film.  We see characters making and using several knives.  In a sequence where some elite Special Forces types are shown being trained to use knives, they start where W.E. Fairbairn (author of Use of the Knife) left off.  Fairbairn’s “Timetable of Death” lists the most lethal arteries in the order of time it takes a body to bleed out from any of them.  Implied there is an either-or idea:  this one is faster, but harder to access, etc.  The drill in the movie, “arm, throat, heart, leg, leg, arm, lung,” hits all the most lethal arteries in sequence, within a few seconds.  Where any of Fairbairn’s victims might have taken a few minutes to bleed out, someone slashed/stabbed in that way would be instantly immobile and dead within seconds.

  
  

  In his commentary, director Friedkin mentions some of the things our U.S. Special Forces have done and are doing here and there in the world.  He also mentions that our government will not officially acknowledge the existence of Delta Force.  What he does not say, but which I found easy to infer, is that some arm of our government did not like some of the implications in this script.  The disingenuousness with which Mr. Friedkin mentioned the ambiguity over whether the character played by Benecio Del Toro is being hunted by his former comrades in arms, or is imagining it, stinks. 

  
  

  I also think the ambiguity itself stinks.  It is such a prominent part of the film that it deserves screen credit.  But it is truly only in the dialogue and does not hold up in the visuals.  Del Toro’s character knows, and tells the Tommy Lee Jones character (a tracker sent in to find him after he slaughters the first few teams who find him) that the high tech military rifle scopes don’t belong to deer hunters.  Everyone in this house noticed that right away, didn’t need to be told.  But Friedkin says the viewer is allowed to make up his own mind, the weasel.  Greyfox tells me that of course he has to make in ambiguous if he wants to stay in business.  I think that stinks, too.  But other than that, there’s nothing about this movie that does stink.  I loved it.

  
  

  I have long respected Tommy Lee Jones as a film actor.  His role as the prison warden in Natural Born Killers was a masterpiece of scenery chewing, and it didn’t just work, it sang.  The man knows how to act for the camera, how to say volumes without speaking, and when to overact.  What I had never realized before is that he is a good-looking man, too.  Never before having seen him with facial hair, I had no idea how sexy he is.  It’s not much of a beard, short and well kept, but it’s enough for me.

  
  

  The story by David Griffiths and Peter Griffiths is believable and engaging.  All the production values are more than just adequate.  Stunts, photographic direction, technical advice from consultants on various aspects of the production, are all excellent.  Tom Brown, Jr. was the tracking consultant.  Knife fights were choreographed by Rafael Kayanan and Tom Kier.  If you know those names, you know that they know their beans.  If not, take my word for it.  It’s a competent rendering of a good story, and worth viewing.  In my opinion, DVD is the best option because of the commentary, deleted scenes and documentaries.

  

  • 11:30 pm
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