The Hunted

I just want to say that I saw the movie yesterday, I went to McAllen from Monterrey N.L. México... , so the movie was great.....

Best Regards.

Roloss
 
<<MAJOR PLOT SPOILER: >>>


<< A knife goes right through his arm and he continues to use that arm. >>

I think I can explain this. There were several endings shot of The HUNTED, the one done after we finished shooting the final fight scene had Jones limping and moving visibly impaired even after six months of healing. They tested the endings with audiences and it looks like the majority of folks liked the one that was eventually shown in the theaters.

<<They employ tendon cuts and muscle rips (true to the teaching earlier in the film) and yet neither fighter shows any sign of fatigue, much less incapacitation.>>

This would be due to editing choices. In the actual sequences shot, both men struggled to get up, leaned on rocks and had several pauses where they had to muster strength to go balls out again. Again opinions differ since some film reviewers mentioned they liked the sluggish effectiveness and reality of the fights and those into wire fu felt the fights should be as fast as Jet Li.

<<Cuts were made across the midsection of either character with no loss of motion. I might be able to take this if they were vampires, like in Blade, but they are supposed to be normal people. >>

Consider that the whole fight lasts a few seconds. You can function especially if your life is on the line with surface cuts to the belly. Also, if you view the fight again- you will note that some of the belly cuts were superficial in that the fighter was hunching away but not quite making it in time to evade the slash. In other parts the belly cuts actually missed and an empty hand follow up strike went on top of it.

It did match the teachings of the training sequence because the training sequence displayed a vital template.. all kill shots. None of which occur until the very end of the fight and even then you have to look at the reality of a true death time table of such bleed outs.

As per tendon cuts- there were none that was severely accomplished by the attacker. The other guy was always resisting and moving away using correct responses.

In conclusion, I do agree that the fight is VERY extended even from my above comments. When we were first asked by the director how long a REAL knife fight would last- we said, "five to ten seconds".

Well, that won't do in Hollywood.

Btw, a puncture wound on the muscle mass of the quadriceps can still enable a man to stumble up the rocks. No tendons, arteries tc. were damaged. It's happened to me in real life and I was able to be mobile for several hours.

The human body can withstand lots of things when it has to.

Thanks for reading.

--Rafael Kayanan--

Sayoc Kali
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Someone else mentioned a hole in a shirt disappearing and reappearing. You'll have to point that out to me since the shirts being ripped and the fight were filmed in continuity - meaning that the shirts were torn and ripped and put on again after each injury. It would have to be some editing mess up for the sequence to have a torn piece of clothing whole again in the next shot. The background itself would have to shift back and forth as well. Really interested when this occurs. Thanks.

 
I was there on the opening showing here. I loved it- I think that it overtakes "exposure" for the ultimate knife movie. that said, however, the plot had huge holes in it. Also, the female FBI agent kept changing clothes. everyone else is wearing a standard windbreaker, and she's wearing armani..All the agents are carrying different guns-a 1911, sig, glock, etc. and TlJ Cannot run that far-noone can. I love the forging scene, though I will agree that It seems that you would forge a different knife for a fight..
 
<<...very cool that you posted on this Raf.>>

Thank you sir.

Btw, I try to focus on the knife elements only since I can't take any credit good or bad about the rest of the film- we were in a sweaty gym training the guys when everyone else was filming. Del Toro and Jones would take turns and we would have their respective stunt doubles working with them. Only on some occasions were they both there at the same time... mostly near the time of shooting the actual scenes.

best,


--Rafael--
 
<<...very cool that you posted on this Raf.>>

Thank you sir, and everyone else for the kind comments.

Btw, I try to focus on the knife elements only since I can't take any credit good or bad about the rest of the film- we (Tuhon Tom Kier and myself) were in a sweaty gym training the guys when everyone else was filming. Del Toro and Jones would take turns and we would have their respective stunt doubles working with them. Only on some occasions were they both there at the same time... mostly near the time of shooting the actual scenes.

best,


--Rafael--
 
Rafael,

Understood...

Drop me an e-mail off line if you would...would like to run something by you.

Thanks,
 
All movies require the suspension of disbelief. I'm just happy that another knife movie was made - plot issues, unrealism and continuity aside.

It was indeed funny in a prior post that, given the opportunity, BDT forged the same blade shape!

Maybe in the director's cut, he'd have forged a folding knife, but it was edited down for brevity's sake. :)
 
Like Del Toro I made my own tracker knife

trackerhomemade.JPG


Roloss_valdes
 
Rafael,

Thank you for replying to me!:) One of the coolest things about these forums is that a nobody like me can converse on a relatively level playing field with guys like you.

I agree with you that the individual techniques look good. The training looks good. I have been a (poor) student of the martial arts for long enough that I look at these films in a different way than the average consumer. It is the sequence of events, continuity and plot that bother me most.

I highly recommend renting this movie when it comes out on DVD. I especially recommend it if it includes the alternate endings you mentioned. Would also be nice if it had "making of" featurets showing the training that you did with the actors and their doubles.:D

I do not mean to knock your contribution to the movie. I only wished to give my perspective as a member of the audience.

Thank you once again.
 
Hello Rob,

Your perspective has as much validity here as anyone else and that's what is good about these forums! I enjoy reading them.

Hopefully, there will be another knife related film that will top the HUNTED. A remake of the Iron Mistress would be one to consider.

best,
--Rafael--
 
I posted one of the first threads about this movie and I was very happy with the final product. I think I liked this movie so much because i didn't set my sights too high. some people say they didn't make the right choice of knife for the movie, but what ever the tracker lacks in practicality it made for with screen presence.

This movie was very remenicent of PREDATOR. The whole idea of man being hunted, hence the title. They traded-in the jungle for forest and the alien for a madman.

We should support this movie. The is a exibition of knifes and the way help us survive
 
Interview with Tom Brown on the movie:


Matt Saha, along with other members of the press, recently sat down with Tom Brown, Jr. to talk about "The Hunted." Tom Brown, Jr. is a survivalist and tracker who served as technical advisor to the film and as role model for the Tommy Lee Jones character, L.T. Bonham. He has been in the business for 25 years teaching people throughout the United States about survival and is the successful author of such books as The Tracker. Check out Matt's interview with Benicio Del Toro as well.

Press: How did you get involved with "The Hunted"?

Tom Brown, Jr.: Billy Friedkin and I go back about a decade. He was originally gonna make a movie about my life -- we worked together and stayed in touch. He started "The Hunted" and asked me to give Benicio and Tommy my skills. So I started with the metaphor of the knives. If you notice, Tommy has a stone knife, which says a lot about the man. He is primitive and a survivalist much like I am. I teach people to go with nothing and build everything ground up and I gave Benicio the tracker knife, as his character is not as adept in the woods as Tommy’s is.

Press: The tracker knife is your invention. How did you come to design it?

Tom Brown, Jr.: An old reporter asked me if I had to take only one tool from civilization into the woods what would it be? I said a knife, so seven years and thirty prototypes later you have the tracker knife-anything for any situation-it can be used as a saw, a skinning blade, it is perfectly balanced so you can throw it like a tomahawk. Unfortunately in the movie you see only 2% of its applications, the rest of the time you see it as a fighting device.

Press: Was the story line in the film close to your life?

Tom Brown, Jr.: The story line is fabricated, but parts happened in my life. A guy I trained went bad and I had to track him down and that is the toughest because when you are tracking someone who knows your skills you start playing a deadly chess game.

Press: Did you find the guy?

Tom Brown, Jr.: Yeah, he found me. I got shot in the back. I realized the mistake at the last minute, but it was nice because the bullet neatly passed through me without doing much damage. He shot me and I hit him hard. He was a military guy and then CIA and then he hired out to other countries. They blamed me, so they said go find him.

Press: Are the tracking skills depicted in the film realistic?

Tom Brown, Jr.: All the skills are true. Friedkin first had to see everything in reality before he did it in the film. I taught Tommy how to make a stone knife. The camouflage, the stalking and the tracking are real, but then there are the latitudes that movies take that pisses me off. I mean I can teach a beginning student how to track a wolf that has a trap on it, and to dig down in the snow to find a winter rosette that can be chewed into a poultice that can be used as an antibiotic, but you are not going to get close to a wolf in that state in 2 minutes, maybe 2 months, yes. And the bloody knife fight at the end—no way it would last 4 minutes, any of those wounds are lethal. I wanted to be proud of the film, but I made the paint, I am not the artist, the director is, and the finished product is his.

Press: How much can you teach someone off the street about survival?

Tom Brown, Jr.: Well there are 36 levels to my classes. In the basic class, after a week I can teach you to survive with nothing. I will teach you to be more aware than you have ever been in your life and to be able to track a mouse across a gravel driveway. It is so easy to teach these skills, if you know what to look for. Here we have this saying, “survival of the fittest,” that works for animals, but for humans it is what you know.

Press: You used to train military personnel, but supposedly you left out of guilt, what happened?

Tom Brown, Jr.: I stopped training the military for awhile. Most of my classes are general public, but I did train elite military groups. I thought I was teaching them how to evade, escape, like downed pilots behind enemy lines, but I found they were using this stuff to beome more efficient killers and that created a moral dilemma in me. Only with 9/11 did I come back to that because my brother- in- law was the first flight officer on the United flight that hit the World Trade Center, and I realized then that enemy now was far different from the enemy of the past. But we screen candidates very carefully. I don’t want to train hired assassins.

Press: How about the killing training in the movie?

Tom Brown, Jr.: I went through the same dilemma as Tommy. I didn’t say stab here, here, and here, but where he says most people who he killed didn’t know he was in the same room as him-that’s what I do.

Press: How did you start out in tracking?

Tom Brown, Jr.: My best friend-his grandfather was an 83 year old Apache, from the Southern Lippin peoples in Northern Mexico. I met him when I was 7 and for nearly eleven years, I picked his brain. He became my best friend and he possessed everything I wanted to know about the wilderness.

Press: Do you use Native-American traditions in your training?

Tom Brown, Jr.: Yes, some of my classes demand use of the Native-American philosophy. Like the pressure-release system which he taught me-it is miniature landscapes found inside a track and each little feature depicts a body function. His people identified over 4,500 of them.

Press: There is an interesting comment in the film, the Del Toro part says to the hunters - are you guys tough, you need those big guns? And he uses a knife, is that your philosophy?

Tom Brown, Jr.: Right, you pull off a gun in the woods and everyone knows where you are. Funny story down in South America—they gave native peoples a rifle to kill monkeys and when they came back a year later only two bullets had been used and they asked why. The tribe said they killed one monkey and it chased the rest away. To me a lot of times a gun is a liability.

Press: Are you a hunter?

Tom Brown, Jr.: No, only when I have to in extreme need.

Press: If you sent somebody in the woods with only one thing, what would you give them, string, matches?

Tom Brown, Jr.: I wouldn’t give them anything. There are 23 different ways to make a fire without matches. You could find everything out there-bones, stone. It gives them freedom and proficiency.

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Here's the link: http://www.bullz-eye.com/mguide/the_hunted/interview_tb.htm
 
I haven't seen the movie, but the "untwirling" knife shot in the previews kinda threw me off. Plus, I hate going to movies when they just get released -- too many annoying people.

I must say that this has been a very interesting thread. Hearing from the trainer of Jones and Del Toro was great, and the interview posted above was very interesting. Great thread.

Sunhelmet -- In your signature you have "Sayon Kali." Is that what you taught the two actors for the movies?
 
Yes - it is "Sayoc Kali".

Don't know if I replied on this earlier but there were several knife throws.. it depends on the FX folks if they can get the proper revolutions in. When you see the film- sometimes they nail it and sometimes they didn't. Some times we were not on the set for the throws as we were off doing training or rehearsals.
A film set is like a small city and several things are going on at all times. In this case one location can be five hours drive from another. So if we were due to train and rehearse, the day would be wasted if we were driving to a location then find out it was raining there or snowing- ruining the shot.


best,
--Rafael--
 
I am curious about the shoes/boots worn in the film by TLJ and BDT.
Any ideas?
 
Went to go see the movie the second time today. I call it research I can't write what my wife said;) about the movie.
Seemed to go slower this time as I picked up more details.
DVD will be a must buy for sure.
One thing for sure the TOPS version is a far cry from the real deal, especially from a makers eye. Although my first attempt wasn't alot closer it will improve shortly.
BTW Del Toro did sling his blood in TLJ eye's during the fight.
 
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