Capture Special Agent, “Killing Machine!”

The movie “Hunted,” which is scheduled to be released on March 12, is good evidence that Hollywood is looking for a way to escape from a dead end. The actions in this movie make use of daggers rather than a long sword or rifle, true to the smell of flesh and blood in proximity fights. In addition, introducing the martial art moves of kung fu, which proceeds stepwise, rather than seeing the direct conclusion with a single stroke, it presents the atrocious but rhythmical scenes of the stabbing, piercing, and chopping of the dagger.

Aaron, performed by Benicio Del Toro who was disciplined as a “Manslaughter Machine” in a unit of special warfare force, returned from the war of Kosovo in 1999 as a war hero but suffered from the nightmares due to his brutal homicide works. Several years later, after being intoxicated by delusion of persecution, he committed murder, mistaking the poachers for the assassinators who came to kill him. The FBI was dispatched but failed to capture the protean Aaron, causing Aaron’s former trainer, Elti, performed by Tommy Lee Jones, to be thrown in. Both of them made their own sword, smelled each others footprints like Indians, and concealed themselves like a chameleon in the downtown of a city. The survival game of Aaron and Elti has started.

In this movie, the director appointed Benicio Del Toro, who shows a frustrated face in which solitude and atmosphere of menace are mixed up, and the renowned character actor, Tommy Lee Jones, who deeply impressed the audiences of “Run Away 2” as an “Expert of pursuit.”

Quoting the part of bible that Abraham devotes his son, Issac, as a sacrifice, the director pretends to conceal the profound anguish of ontology by metaphorically revealing the Oedipus complex, which the “Killing machine” realizes from his trainer during the discipline. However, speaking in a downright way, this movie is no less and more than merely an action movie. The most impressive parts of this movie are the first and last fifteen minutes where the two men confront each other to survive. The episode keeps a single track, the characters’ charisma does not hold up the story, and the facial expressions of the actors look exhausted.

William Fredkin, who directed “French Connection” and “Exorcist,” seems to mix up “Rambo,” which deals with the paranoia of war participants, with “Bush Man,” which describes the innocence of a savage who gets lost in the confusion of present time society. Just lie being obsessed with the volition to show a unique sequence of action, the movie has returned to the genesis of the prehistoric era.

Nonsense exists in this part. In order to show the “Prehistoric Action,” the two actors sharpened rocks and melt steel to make a dagger, but the situation itself, as anybody can take hold of a dagger at about $10, seems quite fatuous. Tommy Lee Jones, 58, who gasps and pants to follow the action scene, looks unequal to the task.

The one notable point of this movie is the terror occurred by auditory sense. In the first part of the movie, Aaron concealed himself in the woods to encroach upon the poachers. The mountain animal-like voice of Aaron will be a pleasure of living in the period of the “5.1 channel home theatre.”

Seung-Jae Lee sjda@donga.com