One of the worst movies I've ever seen

How sad is this?

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Jake (Josh Stewart) is a great hunter from "By God" West Virginia... or was it West "By God" Virginia. He wants to start his own hunting TV series called "The Tree Hugger" as he spends most of his time in a deer stand. He has a professional camera man friend as they head out to deer camp. They are hunting a newly opened area, one that has a huge buck nicknamed, "Movie Star."There is an early clue as to what is about to happen, although the title isn't clear until later. Kudos to DVD cover guys for not revealing any plot spoilers.Some of the film was fine, but other footage, such as watching the trailer hitch, left something to be desired. Much of the film is found footage, while some is not, and I wish they did the herky-jerky ending in the "not" group. What it really looks like is that Josh works at Cabela's and got a bunch of hunting gear sponsors to make them an 87 minute commercial we would pay to watch.Guide: 1 F-bomb. No sex or nudity

The Hunted (2003): Dir: William Friedkin / Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Benicio Del Toro, Connie Nielsen, Leslie Stefanson, John Finn: A film about control regarding who is hunting whom. Tommy Lee Jones plays a tracker who wishes to leave his past behind. He used to train people to kill to survive and one of those individuals is an assassin played by Benicio Del Toro. His battle stress is so severe that two hunters are found slain in a ritualistic fashion. Jones undertakes the challenge of tracking him thus leading to a cat and mouse game until Jones realizes that he must destroy what he created. This comes to no surprise and their big physical confrontation is nothing more than exploited brutality. Director William Friedkin brings mood and detail just as he did with his masterpieces The French Connection and The Exorcist. This film is beneath both of those efforts, which is unfortunate considering the level of talent Friedkin is. Jones and Del Toro are given good backgrounds but eventually it becomes a waiting game for them to finally encounter each other and move forward in beating the crap out of each other. Connie Nielsen as an F.B.I. agent is flat but then again when the leads cannot elevate the film then some supporting role will likely do nothing. It could have done without the graphic bloodshed but unfortunately that's what the hunt was destine to come be. Score: 4 / 10

A soldier (Benicio del Toro) with PTSD takes to the Portland, Oregon woods in Rambo-like fashion. He's paranoid and kills a couple of businessmen from nearby Medford who were weekend deer hunters. The soldier believed the men were CIA spooks sent to find him. The film reveals that he's a Special Forces operator named Aaron Hallam who is AWOL. Hallam is shown to be haunted by his service during the Kosovo War, where he assassinated high priority targets with his hand-forged combat knife. The knife and others like it were forged by Hallam and the others he trained with and is a weapon of significance in the film. An FBI-led manhunt manhunt begins with Special Agent Abby Durrell (Connie Nielsen), who's assisted by L.T. Bonham (Tommy Lee Jones). Bonham was a civilian survival and combatives expert who instructed Hallam during his advanced training. Bonham is a recluse but the FBI bring him into the investigation as a consultant. He's able to identify the specific type of knife and footwear, a moccasin with no tread, used by the killer. It turns out Hallam felt a paternal connection to Bonham that the latter didn't reciprocate. Bonham reveals during a conversation with Durrell that he was never in the armed forces because his father, an Army colonel, had kept him from enlisting after his older brother was killed in Vietnam. His father was also an outdoorsman and survivalist who taught Bonham everything he knew. Hallam becomes more violent and dangerous as the manhunt for him tightens and increases in size. Bonham and Hallam are forced to confront each other in a strange almost kung fu movie style student-mentor battle. There are a few problems I had with this movie. Why would a Special Forces soldier have a hand-forged knife as his only weapon? If the FBI and police had arrested an armed and dangerous fugitive with specialized military training wouldn't he be in a maximum security lock up? A civilian would probably not be allowed to interrogate him either. Oh, well. The Oregon wilderness of Silver Falls State Park where the wilderness scenes were shot is magnificently beautiful. The combat is intense and well-choreographed. It was base on the Filipino martial art of Kali. Kali relies on close-quarters grappling, striking, stick and of course knife fighting. It resembles the close combat style featured in the Bourne films with Matt Damon.

I personally believe that 2004's THE BOURNE SUPREMACY, directed by Paul Greengrass, changed the look of action thrillers forever. Gone was the clean, sometimes lethargic of Hollywood thrillers of old, to be replaced by fast editing, shaky cam action and gung-ho story lines. THE HUNTED is one of the last of the old-school fugitive thrillers and inevitably it pales in comparison to BOURNE.The film itself is pretty much a re-run of THE FUGITIVE and US MARSHALLS, thus completing an unofficial Tommy Lee Jones trilogy of such thrillers. It's got a noticeably harder edge than those movies though, particularly when it comes to the hard-hitting action; there's an eye-popping knife fight in this one which beats anything I can remember in a 1990s Hollywood fight scene in terms of realism and brutality, outside of a Seagal film of course.Unfortunately THE HUNTED has two things working against it, and surprisingly one of those things is William Friedkin. For the guy who brought us THE FRENCH CONNECTION, this is Friedkin off the boil; the direction is stodgy and somehow lacking, leaving the viewer coldly distanced from the action. The second problem is with the script, which never fleshes out the antagonist and never explores the back story properly, which is really annoying. You've never quite sure whether Del Toro's the bad guy or not, and the viewer is left feeling wrongfooted as a result. It's just unsatisfying.There are also some rather silly goofs along the way, including a scene where a guy somehow builds an extensive trap in about five minutes, and also gets the ability to superheat metal on a wood fire. Del Toro and Jones are on strong form here, but the rest of the cast is weak, particularly the actresses involved. But the action is plentiful and well-shot and you could do a lot worse, so this is middle of the road rather than bad.