Retro Film Review: The Hunted (1995)

Christopher Lambert, Joan Chen and John Lone had something in common. All three used to big, promising movie stars of mid-1980s and all three more or less blew their opportunity by picking thankless roles and thus descended to the realm of "straight-to video" movies. An example of such movies, together with an example of those three actors working together, could be found in The Hunted, 1995 action thriller written and directed by J.F. Lawton.

The protagonist of the film is Paul Racine (played by Christopher Lambert), US corporate executive who frequently visits Japan. During one of those visits he meets mysterious and beautiful Kirina (played by Joan Chen) and starts torrid love affair with her. The romance ends with woman's brutal assassination at the hands of ninja. Racine has witnessed the event and saw the face of ninja leader Kinjo (played by John Lone), thus becoming their next target. Racine's life expectancy on the streets of Japan suddenly becomes very low, but the chances for his survival are increased when he receives help from Takeda (played by Yoshio Harada), martial arts expert and the leader of samurai clan in centuries- old feud with ninjas.

The Hunted at times looks refreshingly realistic compared with the majority of low budget martial arts films. Japan provides a lot of exotic locations, swordfights are (for the most part) short and the Japanese characters indeed speak Japanese. Lawton shows himself to be great admirer of Japanese samurai classics, but nevertheless spares few moments to give a taste of everyday life in modern Japan. Unfortunately, his efforts are compromised by the formulaic plot that stretches disbelief beyond the point of suspension - ninjas are shown to be unstoppable, ultra-efficient killer-machines only to turn into total incompetents when faced with a seemingly helpless victim who just happens to be the only Western character in the picture. The character of villain is also quite over the top, irrational and burdened with frustrations more suitable for classic Western baddie than someone trained under the shadow of Eastern philosophies. Story and characters are even less believable due to Lambert's wooden acting, even more irritating in the presence of much better Yoshio Harada and Yoko Shimada. Their performances, Lawton's direction and few bright moments are reasons why The Hunted isn't complete waste of time, but in the end it isn't far from it either.
RATING: 4/10 (+)

(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.reviews on August 27th 2002)

==

Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com
Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/
Cent profile https://beta.cent.co/@drax
Minds profile https://www.minds.com/drax_rp_nc

Brave browser: https://brave.com/dra011

BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG
ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7

Movie URL: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/32631-the-hunted?language=en-US
Critic: AA