Since director William Friedkin refused to craft a whole movie when he made The Hunted, I hereby refuse to write a whole review. Since Friedkin didn’t develop a plot or allow his survivalist characters to exist without hairstylists, I’m not even going to form real paragraphs. Here are my notes, as jotted on the inside of my deconstructed king-size Junior Mints box by the faithful flicker of the theater walkway guidelights:
• Junior Mints are good. We shouldn’t have eaten the whole box before the third preview, though. Especially after drinking a 48-ounce Cherry Coke and doing all that meth. That was the weirdest combo meal ever. I’m going to have to get up soon, either to pee or to see Jesus.
• I haven’t even seen First Blood, but I heard enough about it from my friends in the third grade to know that The Hunted is an unbelievably shameless rip-off of that Sylvester Stallone keeper. It’s got the exact same storyline: a combat veteran (Sly/Benicio Del Toro) has been traumatized and whipped into a killing frenzy in the Pacific Northwest, prompting the authorities to recruit his old commanding officer (Richard Crenna/Tommy Lee Jones) to stop him. There’s a deadly swinging spiked log, big knives, cliff diving and enough blood to go for a swim. But maybe copyright infringement isn’t a crime in Oregon.
• If Ernest Hemingway were alive and boring, he’d be Tommy’s character. If Ernest Hemingway were alive and crazy, he’d be Benicio’s character. These are such laughable men’s men—guys who simply can’t stand to be indoors, who can calm a dying wolf by talking to it. In real life, these men just publish Libertarian pamphlets and complain about the fringe on the American flag down at the post office. Hardly any of them can fight like this, like they’re Jet Li and Jackie Chan in flannel shirts.
• My God, Tommy Lee Jones is old. You could hide Easter eggs in his forehead. His ears are getting so big, they’re starting to wrap around his face like a cocoon from Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
• Benicio Del Toro is absolutely the next Brando. Unfortunately, it’s the Brando from The Island of Dr. Moreau. Or maybe The Freshman. Either way, the only thing he’s likely to kill is a Chinese buffet or two.
