When"The Hunted," starring Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro, made itsbig-screen debut, critics bashed it against the wall and lit it on fire, and forgood reason. A lack of intelligence and poor development make for a mess of amovie.

L.T. Bonham (Jones), a retired member of the Special Forces, ishired by the FBI to capture assassin Aaron Hallam (Del Toro), who's gone AWOLfrom the Special Forces. Once Bonham's best student, Hallam now hides in theOregon woods and hunts humans - deer hunters, actually.

The plot revolvesaround the relationship between a teacher and his student in military fighting.The knife-fighting and well-developed yet gruesome scenes are the only impressivemoments.

Director William Friedkin makes his only adequate move whenopening the film with a scene of a mesmerizing and horrifying murder. The clippulls you in but disappointment mounts as the movie proceeds.

The twocharacters spend much of their time defying gravity and physics. It's impossibleto believe a man can jump off a bridge as tall as the Golden Gate Bridge andsurvive. It's even more ridiculous to believe an old man can fall off a cliffinto dangerous rushing water, hitting rocks along the way, and stay afloat forhalf a mile.

Kudos, however, to the men of action, for Jones and Del Torobring their characters to life even with a dead script.


Thismovie is rated R.