The Hunted (2003 film)

U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Aaron Hallam, a former Delta Force operator, has spent much of his career performing covert assassinations and black operations for the U.S. government. He is awarded the Silver Star for his service in the Kosovo War, but is left wracked with PTSD from the atrocities he witnessed.

In the wilderness of Silver Falls State Park, Oregon, Hallam encounters two hunters equipped with expensive scoped rifles. Hallam tells them that, due to their use of guns and scopes, they are not "true hunters". Insulted, the hunters pursue him, but are overwhelmed by Hallam's tactics and traps and are killed.

L.T. Bonham, a former civilian instructor of military survival and combat training, lives secluded deep in the woods of British Columbia. He is approached by the FBI, who ask for his help in finding who killed the hunters in Oregon, due to his tracking skills. Bonham agrees and joins an FBI task force, led by Assistant Special Agent in Charge Abby Durrell. After examining the crime scene, Bonham deduces that it was one man with a knife, and not a group of men with hatchets, as the FBI originally perceived. He then heads into the woods alone to track, and discovers someone's personal effects in a tree. He is then approached by Hallam, who he recognizes as one of his former students. Hallam tells Bonham that he wrote him letters but never got a response, but Bonham asks about the hunters he murdered, and explains that he believes that they were government assassins sent to kill him. Bonham then fails to reason with him to come in, and a fight ensues. As the two of them fight, Hallam is struck by an FBI tranquilizer and taken into custody.

During his interrogation, Hallam is uncooperative and looks mainly to Bonham, who he views as a father figure. The FBI are then forced to hand him over to the custody of his fellow JSOC operators, who have shown up after learning of his capture, and tell the FBI that Hallam cannot stand trial due to the classified operations he had participated in. While being transported, the operators indicate that they intend to kill Hallam to ensure his silence; Hallam manages to kill all the operatives and escape.

Alerted to the incident, Bonham and the FBI search for Hallam. Bonham finds him at the house of his ex-girlfriend and her daughter in Portland, but he flees after Abby arrives to apprehend him. As Hallam is pursued by the FBI and the Portland Police Bureau, Bonham and Abby briefly search a footlocker of Hallam's belongings that was left back at the ex-girlfriend's house. They find a letter addressed to Bonham, reading: ”L.T., the men you trained and sent to kill me are not soldiers, they’re robots.”, confirming that Hallam's mental state is compromised. After being spotted and cornered in the city by the authorities, Hallam ambushes and kills pursuing FBI agents in a sewer, most notably Abby's boss, Harry Van Zandt, and her friend and partner, Bobby. Hallam flees once again and attempts to board a streetcar to blend in. The police block a bridge that the streetcar is on, and he dives off the bridge into the river below, fleeing upstream. Abby, upset and wanting revenge for her fallen colleagues, wants to send the FBI into the woods at full force to search for Hallam, but Bonham protests, believing he should be the only one to go look for him, as further FBI agents would just be killed.

Resurfacing up the river, Hallam crafts a knife out of reclaimed metal, as Bonham taught him. Meanwhile, Bonham crafts his own knife out of stone and enters the wilderness alone, against Abby's wishes, in search of Hallam. Bonham is caught by one of Hallam's traps and is thrown down a waterfall. Surviving, he meets Hallam at the bottom, and they engage in hand-to-hand combat. The two sustain severe injuries, and Bonham's knife is broken, but Bonham manages to gain the upper hand and stab Hallam with his own knife, killing him just as Abby and the FBI arrive.

Bonham, mostly recovered, returns to his home in British Columbia. He starts to burn Hallam's letters, in which he expressed his concerns over the things he witnessed during his service.

The film was partially filmed in and around Portland, Oregon and Silver Falls State Park. Portland scenes were filmed in Oxbow Park, the South Park Blocks, the Columbia Blvd Treatment Plant, and Tom McCall Waterfront Park.[2] The technical adviser for the film was Tom Brown Jr., an American outdoorsman and wilderness survival expert. The story is partially inspired by a real-life incident involving Brown, who was asked to track down a former pupil and Special Forces sergeant who had evaded capture by authorities. This story is told in Tom's book, Case Files Of The Tracker. Chapter 2 of this book, "My Frankenstein," describes Brown's tracking and fight with a former special operations veteran.

The hand-to-hand combat and knife fighting in the film featured Filipino Martial Arts. Thomas Kier and Rafael Kayanan of Sayoc Kali were brought in by Benicio del Toro.[3] They were credited as knife fight choreographers for the film.

• Official site
• The Hunted at IMDb
• The Hunted at AllMovie
• The Hunted at the TCM Movie Database
• The Hunted at Box Office Mojo
• The Hunted at the American Film Institute Catalog