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Plot Summary
When
two business men are viciously murdered, while out deer hunting, an expert
survivalist and tracker is persuaded to come out of retirement to help the
FBI track down the murderer. The
reclusive expert (Tommy Lee Jones) discovers that the murderer is a highly
trained army agent who he himself trained a few years previously. A game
of cat and mouse ensues as teacher and pupil use their skills to out wit
each other…
Review
The movie starts off with
plenty of action when our future fugitive is on a special ops mission in
Bosnia. The movie then switches to America and the survival expert is
introduced. Everything is interesting enough so far and looks promising.
Unfortunately from then on the movie basically runs out of story and
becomes a long drawn out chase between the FBI and the fugitive. The movie
has nothing new or original to offer and there are too many clichés. The
idea of expert tracker is interesting for a while but isn’t enough for a
full-length movie.
There are a lot of improbable
parts in the movie. Firstly the father/son, teacher/pupil relationship
that is developed between the characters isn’t really credible. Also
there are some very silly parts that are a bit annoying. The worse was
towards the end when “hunter” and “hunted” take time out from
their chase to make weapons. One starts chipping away at a rock to make a
stone knife while the other lights up a fire to hammer a piece of metal
into a knife. There was obvious some lofty idea that as survivalists there
was no honour in using guns! Anyway it just didn’t make any sense to me!
It is difficult to comment on
the acting when the movie is let down by the story and script but I
didn’t see anything special here. Tommy Lee Jones, sporting a grey
beard, looked convincing enough for his character’s
“mountain man” image but looked a little old to be able to keep
up with the younger Del Toro.
The
Bottom Line: A tired story that doesn’t offer anything new and has
too many silly parts to be a serious suspense thriller.
Reviewed by Niall
Quinn,
Premier Movie Reviews 2003
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