But “The Hunted”, as stated above, is a chase movie, and its most glaring lapse in storytelling is failing to convince us to care about the chase at hand. On both sides of the conflict, screenwriters David Griffiths, Peter Griffiths and Art Monterastelli attempt to tap into the psychological element of their characters’ motives. In both cases, they come up short. Hallam murders four hunters in Oregon because they are killing for sport, and prevents any loss of life he deems as senseless as the horrors he witnessed in Kosovo. But the specifics of what drove Hallam to madness, and the reasons for his retaliation in this form, go largely unexplored, and Del Toro - the patient, intelligent actor who won an Oscar for “Traffic” - has little to do aside from keeping stride to avoid capture. L.T. suffers a similar lack of dimension, as we never fully understand why he has made it his mission to hunt Hallam with such ruthless resolve. After training Hallam to be an efficient assassin years ago, does he feel responsible for creating a killing machine? It’s hard to say. Tommy Lee Jones is always a pleasure to watch and he contributes some graceful notes to the character, but again, the role is not fleshed-out and there isn’t an adequate back story for L.T. Supporting players like Connie Nielsen (“One Hour Photo”), as a determined FBI agent, are lost in the mix.

The director is William Friedkin, who enjoyed success in the 1970s with acclaimed films like “The Exorcist” and “The French Connection”, but has experienced a recent slump with mediocre credits like “The Rules of Engagement” littered across his résumé. “The Hunted” is, in some ways, a return to form for Friedkin; his staging of the action is top-drawer, even when the going gets silly (such as a prolonged chase where the 60-ish Jones pursues Del Toro for several city blocks, and then boards a speeding train - again, why would he cheat death to catch this guy?). When “The Hunted” settles into nothing more than one big, long chase, the speed and fury of the film keep us engaged, but the missed opportunities are disheartening. If you’ve got two Academy Award winners at your cause, please give them some material to work with - not just thin characters and a plot that abandons all subtexts for routine chase movie mechanics. While “The Hunted” has its thrills and maintains a lean pace, it boils down to just another case of wondering what could have been.

WILLARD


Starring Crispin Glover, R. Lee Ermy,
Laura Elena Harring and Jackie Burroughs
Director Glen Morgan
Canadian Classification 14A
Released by New Line Cinema - 03/03

If I told someone I was headed off to “the new Crispin Glover flick”, they would probably stare blankly, scratch their head and say - with a glazed-over look of pure confusion - “Who?”. I would then respond, You know, the dorky dad from “Back to the Future”? The creepy thin man from “Charlie’s Angels”? The geeky reporter from “Nurse Betty”? Yeah, that’s him.

Granted, having Crispin Glover as the headlining star of your movie is not exactly going to ensure instant blockbuster success - particularly if the premise is something like that of “Willard”, in which Glover commands swarms of diseased rodents to exact the most demented revenge plot of the year. A remake of a little-known 1971 horror film, “Willard” plays like a Tim Burton film with a very twisted edge fused with one of the quirkier episodes of “The X-Files”, that somewhere loses grasp of its eccentricity and goes off the rails. But there is something oddly compelling about Glover as 30-year old loner Willard Stiles, belittled by his boss (R. Lee Ermy) and run down by his ailing, miserable mother (Jackie Burroughs), who befriends a mouse named Socrates as his one and only companion. Oh, and he uses an army of rats in his basement to do his bidding. I forgot that part...

With such a bizarre plot, “Willard” is not a film for mainstream audiences, but writer-director Glen Morgan (a driving force behind “The X-Files”, as well as such feature films as “The One” and “Final Destination”) knows to approach the material with a comic sense of the macabre. A moment in which a helpless cat is pitted against dozens of rats would be downright disturbing if the scene didn’t play out in such a darkly funny fashion, and for the most part, Morgan finds the right tone for “Willard”. He gets quite the dynamic performance from his oddball star, who boils with caged rage and repression, and builds sympathy for the lonely manchild Willard even while playing his twitchy persona to the hilt. And it works - because after all, the dude isn’t quite “all right”. Glover has a touching relationship with Socrates - who’s the good mouse, of course. The bad rat is Ben, who is humongous (approximately the size of a small house cat). The film benefits from the work of its animal trainers - Socrates and Ben are major characters, and are so convincing that their scenery-chewing antics (heh heh) steal the spotlight from the human support; R. Lee Ermy (the drill sergeant from “Full Metal Jacket”) is just too obvious a choice for Willard’s abusive boss, and Laura Elena Harring (“Mulholland Drive”) has little to do as a friendly co-worker.

“Willard” may have loads of delicious black humor, great technical credits and the one and only Crispin Glover, but one cannot overlook the lost potential of a premise that disintegrates from kooky character dimension into pointless schlock. Still, it’s something to check out if you’re up for something... different. And you aren’t bothered by lots and lots of ugly rats.