(6/07/02)

David and Peter Griffiths have been mostly hired pens doing various assignments and rewrites. They ended up getting credited for their work on Collateral Damage, which is too bad. They are brothers who were born in England in the early 1950s. Unfortunately, I dont have much background information available to me. How they broke into the biz or anything. The Hunted is their first produced original screenplay.

The tagline for this movie according to the Internet Movie Database: "In This Game Of Hide And Seek, If You're It...You're Dead." It is fitting.

The script opens with a quote from Ernest Hemingway: "Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter."

The opening scene shows two hunters in the Cascade Mountains. Its night, they are by a camp fire cleaning their weapons. Unbeknownst to them, they are being stalked by Howard Hallem. A dishonorably discharged Marine who was trained to hunt and kill men. We also learn later that from a very young age he has been a hunter of sorts. He is an expert in camouflage and tracking. Hes also a sniper with incredible reflexes and patience. He once maneuvered through an open field for 4 days in order to kill the target.

After playing cat and mouse with the hunters, he kills them.

The FBI arrives as does special agent Abby Tucker and her team (Emerson and Dressler). We learn that the two hunters are victims number six and seven in just one month. Also arriving is Jay Banahan and his dog, a German Shorthaired Pointer. Jay is an expert tracker, also ex-military. The opening scene is hopefully rewritten. If there have already been five slayings in the area these hunters were in, they would have been more aware of their surroundings and would never have gotten involved with Hallem as it is portrayed in this scene. I also wondered if they would even be hunting at all. Five already dead in a matter of weeks. The Police and FBI would be crawling all over the place.

Abby calls back her search team and Jay and his dog go off by themselves to track Hallem. After an exciting sequence where its sometimes hard to tell who is casing who, Jay eventually follows Hallem back to his hideout and captures him.

During the apprehension of Hallem Jays dog is killed. When Jay brings Hallem back Abby notices that Hallem is beaten badly. She confronts Jay and files a report on him. Abby at first is a little hard to take or even understand. Shes always messing with puzzles (the ones you assemble from a box) and seems so self-righteous. Heres a person, Hallem, who is a mass-murderer. No one is going to care if he was roughed up a little. First of all, it was a hellish fight between Jay and Hallem to begin with. They both should be battered a little. She orders a background check on Jay and learns things about him later on that I will not disclose.

They now take Hallem back to Seattle. While on the FBI plane, after a joke at the expense of Hallem, he turns to Emerson, Dressler, and Abby and says chillingly:

			HALLEM
		Youre dead.
		(then to Dressler)
		You too.
		(and Abby)
		And you.

He also lets Jay know that they will meet again.

I loved that bit of dialogue. What an effective and blunt way to let us know this is going to get ugly. The writers avoid heavy-handed writing by being so blunt that it sometimes caught me off guard. How many scripts have the psychotic killer getting into some kind of long drawn out oratory exchange with his nemesis? Too many. This is just matter of fact stuff for Halem. He doesnt get preachy, he just says, "youre dead."

Once back in Seattle Hallem escapes. How he does it isnt really explained. The way it is written is fine, though I would have liked to see how he does it. Apparently while Hallem was being transported to the jail he kills a couple of guards who were in the van with him and escapes. We learn about this as Abby does, in a bar from a TV Special Report. If subsequent rewrites found a tricky and efficient way to show how he escapes, that would be a plus. Hallem now is loose in a large city and has revenge on his mind. He is an interesting character. Its the chase he loves. Hes like an animal and loves the hunt, and even to be hunted. As he manipulates and stalks his pray we learn he is very comfortable adapting to his new environment. I felt David and Peter Griffiths development of Hallem's character was effective.

Overall the script is very strong. The narrative is tight and moves fluidly. David and Peter Griffiths prose is very engaging and visual. The suspense builds in all of the right places. The exposition is incredibly efficient. They dont slow the script down with pages of description and intricacies that isnt necessary anyway. They maneuver Hallem around his environment with ease, and at times the story has a lot of horror elements to it.

How the writers describe Hallem using camouflage is incredibly spooky and effective. He seemingly materializes from walls and disappears in an instant. But how he does it is believable. The city aspects where he hunts Abby and her team, and then avoids Jay as he is hunting him, was going to be hard to pull off I thought. Showing us how someone can camouflage themselves in the woods is one thing, but doing it in a city is quite another.

The Hunted is going to be an intense and thrilling movie with some nice horror elements worked in. Its a good script, has a few problems, but hopefully rewrites have addressed all those. The story does suffer from a lack of characterization, and it does use a couple of ploys to try and establishing character. For example, Abbys fascination with complex puzzles was really pointless for this kind of a story. There really wasnt much of a puzzle here, and how that helps explain her is weak. I couldn't decide if this was some kind of symbolism or a real attempt at characterization. This movie is a chess match between hunters, not a puzzle to be solved. It needed something else to tie it in with her as a character. Another concern is that we have two strong protagonists, Abby and Jay. This sometimes can derail a story. The audience needs to have that one character to focus on, and put their trust in. Movies where the audience isn't sure whose story it is often fail. For example, in Copycat its Sigourney Weaver and Holly Hunter who are both two strong protagonists and in the end it hurt the story. The same goes for The Bone Collector, where its Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. Whose story is it? Is this a thriller where Abby is in jeopardy or an action-adventure with Jay hunting Hallem? When you splice your narrative like this you take the chance of confusing and alienating the audience. This may seem like a little thing, but I think its important. (I'm reaching here to find a viable criticism which is why I liked the story. Not a lot to find fault with.)

Jay and Hallem's characters are interesting because they are very much alike. Often the protagonist and antagonist are very similar people. In this story they obviously are. Both are hunters. Jay has his reasons for what he does, as does Hallem. What I liked about these two characters is that it wasn't anything personal. There isn't some contrived attempt to explain Hallem's obsession with Jay as a means for him to get back at the guy for something that happened in the past. Hallem just likes to hunt people. He gets off on it.

The cast is exceptional. According to the Internet Movie Database the names of some of the characters have changed a little. Tommy Lee Jones plays Jay Banahan, which is now "Bonham." Benicio Del Toro plays Hallem, whose first name is now "Aaron." And Connie Nielsen plays Abby. I really like the casting, especially Del Toro as Hallem. It should be interesting to see what he does with the role.

The movie was to open earlier this year, but Del Toro broke his arm during filming and production was delayed for awhile.

To go along with a great cast is an exceptional director, William Friedkin. This is the guy who directed The French Connection and The Exorcist back-to-back in the early seventies. Recently he did Rules of Engagement, which wasnt as bad as some critics felt is was.

This one has success written all over it. It should be an entertaining, exciting edge-of-your-seat thriller that will not disappoint.

Look for it at a theater neat you this fall.

Until next time.

--Chris