Tommy Lee Jones had a peculiar status late in his career: he starred in several action blockbusters, without getting to do anything action star-like in them. When you think of Jones in action movies, you remember how he commands a scene, rather than any physical dominance. In Under Siege, the climactic knife fight isn’t what makes him memorable; it’s moments like the conversation directly beforehand, where you can practically see the footprints on the ground due to him acting circles around Steven Seagal, with banger lines like, “I got tired of coming up with last-minute desperate solutions to impossible problems created by other f**king people.” Jones was frequently action-adjacent throughout the ’90s, until he made the bold career step of playing a professional going after a wanted fugitive — and actually getting in some action star moments — in 2003’s The Hunted.
Directed by legendary filmmaker William Friedkin, the story follows tracker and former survival instructor L.T. Bonham (Jones) as he gets recruited by the FBI. The target is a mentally unstable Special Forces operator, Aaron Hallam (Benicio del Toro), who is savagely murdering anyone he comes across in the woods that he inhabits, believing them to not be true hunters. As Aaron is a former student of his, L.T. takes it upon himself to track him down and capture him before he can harm anyone else.
‘The Hunted’ is Finding An Audience on Streaming
The Hunted didn’t do so hot at the time of its release, earning a meager 30% on Rotten Tomatoes, and underperforming at the box office, but it’s getting a new surge of eyes on it since it recently began streaming on Paramount+. This’ll hopefully garner some renewed interest in it. Because while the basic plot is nothing new or off-the-charts with originality, the film has merit just in how it made Tommy Lee Jones a late-in-career action star, if only for one movie.
Unlike The Fugitive, where Jones was in a commanding role and the one he was after (i.e. Harrison Ford) got to do the cool action hero antics, with The Hunted, L.T. is considerably more hands-on — and this time, he’s the one who has to take a tumble into a waterfall and sport an impressive beard. More than that, his fugitive, Hallam, is actually guilty and willing to get dirty to keep from getting into custody, which means the two of them throw down. The action isn’t just stunt doubles and quick editing doing the work, either; Jones and Del Toro seemingly perform most of their own combat on camera, both with their bare hands and with knives, which is the result of three months of daily training before filming.
Tommy Lee Jones Is a Badass (In General, But Also Specifically Here)
Impressively, Jones was 55 during filming, and he plays up the archetype of a weathered professional who has to be brought in for one last job. Unlike other characters who fit into a similar mold, the film allows him to be vulnerable and show his age. He’s scared of heights and flying (even throwing up when getting out of a helicopter), is socially anxious when talking about himself, and despite how skilled a fighter he is, he still gets cut up and bruised in his altercations with Hallam and has to power through to keep up. And even though he’s trained others in how to kill, L.T. has never done it himself. It’s a nice balance of humanity that keeps him from falling into the standard trope of the retired legend.
Surprisingly, for all the stunt work he does in the movie, Jones’ most epic moment is his introduction. L.T. starts out running through the woods of British Columbia, tracks and saves a wolf from a snare trap that caught its leg, and mends the wound before freeing it. That would be enough to make him likable, but afterward, he goes to a bar, finds the poacher who laid the snare, and uses said snare to slam his head into the table. As the guy’s imposing friend gets up, L.T. does the most badass finger point that would make Harrison Ford jealous, and it keeps the guy at bay. The scene ends with L.T. casually saying, “No more snares on wolves, guys.” The unspoken level of intimidation that he has on the guy is cool on its own, but it’s made way better upon rewatch when you realize L.T. could’ve probably gone all Galahad from Kingsman on the lot of them, and he just chose not to.
Beyond all that, The Hunted is an entertaining action movie that benefits from a runtime that’s less than 90 minutes (not including credits), and a third act that’s effectively one long action sequence with minimal dialogue, which feels oddly reminiscent of Predator. Also, Johnny Cash does the opening narration, and “The Man Comes Around” is the needle drop as the end credits roll, which means it beat out the opening credits for Dawn of the Dead by a year. and the credits to Logan by 14 years. Johnny Cash makes everything better, and The Hunted supports that fact.
If you want to see Tommy Lee Jones fill the role of an older man who can rough up young hooligans (a proud position held previously by Charles Bronson, then followed by Liam Neeson, and currently held by Bob Odenkirk), The Hunted is currently streaming on Paramount+.
- Release Date
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March 11, 2003
- Runtime
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94 minutes
- Writers
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Art Monterastelli, David Griffiths
- Producers
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James Jacks, Marcus Viscidi, Ricardo Mestres