by J.E. Sawyer
Holy shit! Do you like knife fights and tracking? If so, I bet The Hunted, starring Academy Award winnner Tommy Lee Jones, Academy Award winner Benicio Del Toro and Hot Danish Chick Connie Nielsen will be right up your alley! But boy, if you don't get off on a solid 94 minutes of tracking and knife fighting, you may be a little disappointed.
This is not The Fugitive. Hell, it's not even U.S. Marshals. It's just William Friedkin throwing bearded Academy Award winner Tommy Lee Jones at another dumb chase movie. In this dumb chase movie, Academy Award winner Benicio Del Toro plays a renegade Special Forces assassin who's gone nuttier than a squirrel in September. He's running around in the woods of Oregon knifing up other Special Forces guys who have been sent to take him out. He says a few things throughout the course of the film about how people don't respect nature and animals and shit, but I was about to snap the neck of a spotted owl if TLJ didn't track BDT down fast enough to have another knife fight.
Please note the presence of the knife in the previous passage. Now, let's move on.
Academy Award winner Tommy Lee Jones is the man who trained him and, ergo, must hunt him down. In several flashback scenes, we learn that the vast majority of his Special Forces training consisted of tracking, knife fighting, and making knives out of the raw elements of the Earth -- like busted up cars, rocks, and chifforobes. This last part becomes important later, when both men lose their knives.
Connie Nielsen is the token pseudo-romantic interest (and there's about as much chemistry between her and TLJ as a 6th grader's vinegar and baking soda volcano). She is the FBI Special Agent sent to bring BDT in for his grisly murders. However, her character is irrelevant to the plot because she's completely ineffectual at finding Academy Award winner Benicio Del Toro without the mad tracking skillz of Academy Award winner Tommy Lee Jones. She doesn't even use a knife once in the whole damned movie. Clearly, William Friedkin is trying to tell us something: dumb broads bring guns to knife fights.
I think I've pretty much summarized the movie for you, so I'll move on to the quick recap. There's tracking in the forest, tracking in Portland (above and below ground), tracking in houses, tracking in Canada, and knife fights in the forest, Portland, and by some rapids. The knife fight by the rapids is preceded by, I shit you negative, Tommy Lee Jones crafting a knife from rocks and Benicio Del Toro forging a knife from the top of a car windshield in a small campfire. At this point, I was beginning to expect that the final duel between the men would be a Raingutter Regatta or Pinewood Derby held at the Boy Scout Troop 137 pot luck.
If I had to pick a literary equivalent to The Hunted, it would probably be The Lorax, by Dr. Seuss. Basically, Benicio Del Toro is like the Lorax but, you know, with a knife. Society is, of course, the Onceler. I think that leaves Tommy Lee Jones as a Brown Bar-ba-loot and Connie Nielsen as a Swomee-Swan. However, I think I'd rather read The Lorax fifteen times in Polish than watch The Hunted again. Because it sucks ass.
P.S.: I wrote this review because I know Anna wants to make out with Benicio Del Toro and I live to break Anna's heart.
Thursday, April 10, 2003
Wednesday, April 09, 2003
EXTRA! Baghdad Falls!: 21 Day Collapse Eclipses French Record
(From ECA's Wire Services)
The rematch of the controversial 1991 draw between Coalition forces and the Iraq army came to a sudden and early close Wednesday in Baghdad, as the Iraqi corner surprisingly threw in the towel. The debacle has not only interfered with the plans of TV journalists for an extended stay in warmer climes, but it replaced the longstanding benchmark of military ineptitude, established by France in 1940.
Analysts were surprised by the unexpected demise of the Saddamites, since the Coalition was operating without three crack squads of German army cooks and the platoon of elite Saudi Mercedes mechanics who played such an important role in the 1991 precursor to this match. Moreover, the Coalition had misplaced the U.S. 4th Infantry Division, its vaunted "sucker punch". Coalition commanders had only recently located the lost division and had not yet moved it into the ring.
In the opening moments of the rematch, in fact, the Saddamites had put up a ferocious battle. The sons of the late Saddam Hussein, the late Uday and the late Quasay, had "keyed" the doors of seven Bradley armored vehicles parked on the front lawn of one of the late Saddam's palaces and late members of their gang had slashed the tires of two M-1 Abrams tanks, before inadvertently discovering that the tanks did not have tires and that tanks are quite heavy.
In fact, this determined resistance led seasoned war correspondents, R.W. Apple of the New York Times and Robert Fisk of the London Independent, to report that the Iraqis had pushed the Coalition forces into the sea and were proceeding to butcher thousands of ringside civilians who had not cheered loudly enough for the late Saddam. This report was picked up by most American news outlets and the BBC, since informed observers had expected this result and the Iraqi army had a long history of butchering nearby civilians. However, some dissident voices in the U.S. Defense Department, speaking only on background, pointed out that the nearest sea was the Caspian Sea, 1500 miles from Baghdad in the other direction, and no Iraqi military unit in history had ever advanced successfully beyond Kuwait City.
President Jacques Chirac of France was magnimonious about the fall of the hoary French record. President Chirac gave substantial credit to the late Saddam Hussein, with whom he had long-time business and personal relationships. Chirac stated that, although the French had given much to establish the Saddamite regime, the late dictator had taken French principles to a new level. Nonetheless, Chirac said, "I doubt that the French motto, 'All hat and no cattle' will ever be replaced with the new Iraqi chant, 'It ain't over 'til....whoops, it's over'." American journalists on the scene were awestruck by the fact that Chirac could say "It's over" in seven languages.
Other French officials were less sanguine. Foreign Minister Dominique de Villipen pointed out that the technology of war has changed substantially since the French set the world standard for surrender. "The French army had to retreat through vineyards and cities full of dog droppings," he argued. The Iraqis were able to flee across the open desert with the best of French technology at their command."
Villipen went on, "In American baseball, although Mark McGuire hit 70+ home runs, everyone remembers Babe Ruth for his performance and his larger-than-life personality. Despite the Iraqi futility, I expect that France will be similarly remembered, for a longstanding combination of pusillanimity and poor personal hygiene."
...In Other Sports News
April 9, 2003 Democratic Republic of Congo
The United League of Nations traveling team, the Blue Hat Bureaucrats, known and loved back in New York as the Newmans (for Alfred E. Newman, quote: "What, me worry?"), took it on the chin again today, as a thousand people under their protection were massacred in the Northern part of that country.
This runs the Newmans' string of road losses to at least three, following similar performances in Bosnia and Rwanda. The Newmans were apparently concentrating on polishing their helmets, as they were again unable to control the offensive movements of the more highly motivated murderers. Coach Kofi Annan was, however, upbeat. "There were only a thousand innocent civilians murdered in this match-up. That is a much lower number than in any of our past performances. At this rate of improvement, we should be down to the hundreds in the near future."
Asked, back in New York, whether the coach's job was in jeopardy, Libya, which currently chairs the ULN Human Rights Committee, responded, "Heh."
... Today's Sports Quiz
What is a Mirage?
a. A French fighter jet
b. A French military force
c. A French promise
d. All of the above
Answer in the next issue.
The rematch of the controversial 1991 draw between Coalition forces and the Iraq army came to a sudden and early close Wednesday in Baghdad, as the Iraqi corner surprisingly threw in the towel. The debacle has not only interfered with the plans of TV journalists for an extended stay in warmer climes, but it replaced the longstanding benchmark of military ineptitude, established by France in 1940.
Analysts were surprised by the unexpected demise of the Saddamites, since the Coalition was operating without three crack squads of German army cooks and the platoon of elite Saudi Mercedes mechanics who played such an important role in the 1991 precursor to this match. Moreover, the Coalition had misplaced the U.S. 4th Infantry Division, its vaunted "sucker punch". Coalition commanders had only recently located the lost division and had not yet moved it into the ring.
In the opening moments of the rematch, in fact, the Saddamites had put up a ferocious battle. The sons of the late Saddam Hussein, the late Uday and the late Quasay, had "keyed" the doors of seven Bradley armored vehicles parked on the front lawn of one of the late Saddam's palaces and late members of their gang had slashed the tires of two M-1 Abrams tanks, before inadvertently discovering that the tanks did not have tires and that tanks are quite heavy.
In fact, this determined resistance led seasoned war correspondents, R.W. Apple of the New York Times and Robert Fisk of the London Independent, to report that the Iraqis had pushed the Coalition forces into the sea and were proceeding to butcher thousands of ringside civilians who had not cheered loudly enough for the late Saddam. This report was picked up by most American news outlets and the BBC, since informed observers had expected this result and the Iraqi army had a long history of butchering nearby civilians. However, some dissident voices in the U.S. Defense Department, speaking only on background, pointed out that the nearest sea was the Caspian Sea, 1500 miles from Baghdad in the other direction, and no Iraqi military unit in history had ever advanced successfully beyond Kuwait City.
President Jacques Chirac of France was magnimonious about the fall of the hoary French record. President Chirac gave substantial credit to the late Saddam Hussein, with whom he had long-time business and personal relationships. Chirac stated that, although the French had given much to establish the Saddamite regime, the late dictator had taken French principles to a new level. Nonetheless, Chirac said, "I doubt that the French motto, 'All hat and no cattle' will ever be replaced with the new Iraqi chant, 'It ain't over 'til....whoops, it's over'." American journalists on the scene were awestruck by the fact that Chirac could say "It's over" in seven languages.
Other French officials were less sanguine. Foreign Minister Dominique de Villipen pointed out that the technology of war has changed substantially since the French set the world standard for surrender. "The French army had to retreat through vineyards and cities full of dog droppings," he argued. The Iraqis were able to flee across the open desert with the best of French technology at their command."
Villipen went on, "In American baseball, although Mark McGuire hit 70+ home runs, everyone remembers Babe Ruth for his performance and his larger-than-life personality. Despite the Iraqi futility, I expect that France will be similarly remembered, for a longstanding combination of pusillanimity and poor personal hygiene."
...In Other Sports News
April 9, 2003 Democratic Republic of Congo
The United League of Nations traveling team, the Blue Hat Bureaucrats, known and loved back in New York as the Newmans (for Alfred E. Newman, quote: "What, me worry?"), took it on the chin again today, as a thousand people under their protection were massacred in the Northern part of that country.
This runs the Newmans' string of road losses to at least three, following similar performances in Bosnia and Rwanda. The Newmans were apparently concentrating on polishing their helmets, as they were again unable to control the offensive movements of the more highly motivated murderers. Coach Kofi Annan was, however, upbeat. "There were only a thousand innocent civilians murdered in this match-up. That is a much lower number than in any of our past performances. At this rate of improvement, we should be down to the hundreds in the near future."
Asked, back in New York, whether the coach's job was in jeopardy, Libya, which currently chairs the ULN Human Rights Committee, responded, "Heh."
... Today's Sports Quiz
What is a Mirage?
a. A French fighter jet
b. A French military force
c. A French promise
d. All of the above
Answer in the next issue.
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