Plot
In the Pacific Northwest wilderness, two hunters (who are later implied to be operatives of the Central Intelligence Agency's Special Activities Division are viciously murdered by Aaron Hallam (Benicio del Toro), a former 1st SFOD-D operator who is living in the wilderness. North of the Canadian border—in the wilderness of British Columbia—L.T. Bonham (Tommy Lee Jones), a former USSOCOM instructor, is approached and asked to help apprehend Hallam, a former student of his. According to the authorities briefing Bonham, the younger man has gone renegade after suffering severe battle stress from his time in the Kosovo War.
Bonham agrees and is assisted in the manhunt by an Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) task force, led by Assistant Special Agent in Charge Abby Durrell (Connie Nielsen). It is Bonham himself, however, who locates and apprehends Hallam after tracking him and finding the subterranean den in which he's been living. After an intense stand-off, the two struggle in a quick fight in which Bonham is injured and Hallam is captured by the arriving agents. During his interrogation, Hallam states that he went AWOL because the Army now seeks to kill him before he can divulge information regarding the missions he's performed. This story is reinforced when the local authorities and FBI are circumvented by nameless SFOD-D operators with high clearance who arrive and take possession of the prisoner.
While being transported by his former SFOD-D team members in the back of an unmarked truck, Hallam manages to escape and kill the operatives, causing the vehicle to swerve out of control and overturn. Alerted to the accident, Bonham and the FBI team arrive at the scene and the chase begins again. The team tracks Hallam across the country, nearly catching him at his ex-wife's house, but Hallam consistently evades them. Realizing that the FBI's tactics aren't working, Bonham strikes out on his own and the search quickly becomes a personal battle between teacher and student, finally culminating in an intense knife fight among the waterfalls of a national forest. The film ends with Bonham killing Hallam with his own knife by stabbing him in the chest. The FBI team arrives too late, Bonham returns to British Columbia, where he starts burning letters that were sent to him from Hallam.
Read more about this topic: The Hunted (2003 film)
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