Infinite Loops

Triangle 2009

Dir: Christopher Smith

Rated: R

I had a migraine by the time the end credits of this particular movie started. Because I felt like I'd been brained with the Confuse-O-Stick® and left to deal with what everything might mean in the consequences of the actions Jess (Melissa George) perpetrates. So this one's going to be shorter than usual. It starts off in a confusing place. I'd be more detailed about it all, but I'm still trying to patch the ragged quilt of plot together. It's not out of sequence in the way that Pulp Fiction was—where everything comes full circle and makes sense at the end. Everything does come full circle, but it still makes no sense.

Long story short, Jess is taking a boat trip with her friend Greg on a Saturday morning. She's preparing to leave and presumably takes her autistic son, Tommy, to school so he can be looked after while she's gone. But when she arrives at the dock, Greg can tell something is off with her because Jess looks incredibly confused. His other friends (Sally, Downey, Heather, and deckhand Victor) can't ignore her odd behavior and the girls rudely whisper like high school gossip hounds on the stern of the boat. At this point, even though I'm confused by Jess, I already really don't like Sally. I might have liked Heather if she'd spent more time in the movie. But that's giving away a plot point.

This is kind of like how I ended up looking by the end of this movie... Tired and confused.

They sail out until the wind just up and dies on them, and like in any good "scary" movie our heroes are headed right for a huge storm while stuck out in the middle of nowhere. Sure, they try calling the coast guard, but see it's an electrical storm so the radio is all messed up. Greg does get a hold of someone for a second who sounds distressed, but the storm capsizes the boat and Heather is missing when they all climb on the wreck and try to think about what to do next.

My question is: What was the point of Heather in the first place? I felt no emotional connection to her at all. She's a stranger to me and to Jess and Sally's frantic shrieking about her just makes me feel less. Because I do not like Sally. Sally needs to shut the hell up.

So they finally see this cruise ship heading toward them and climb on board when they see someone peek over the side on the upper deck. Jess keeps mentioning that she can't shake the feeling that she's been there before and everyone else doesn't believe her. She hears things in stereo at one point, finds her car keys on the floor, and they all split up once they reach the dining hall to see if they can find anyone to help them.

Since when is splitting up ever a good idea in these kind of movies?

Jess ends up on her own after a bit of an argument with Greg and, thanks to a mirror with "GO TO THE THEATER" written on it in blood, Jess eventually makes her way there. But not before an injured Victor tries to strangle her and she accidentally kills him when she shoves him away from her. Jess then runs to the theater and finds Sally and Downey screaming over Greg's body—saying she shot him and generally shrieking a lot. Both get shot by a masked figure and Jess runs.

She eventually fights the figure off and it warns her, muffled through the Scarecrow mask, that she needs to kill everyone to leave. Jess isn't having any of this nonsense and, after wresting the shotgun away, shoots this person and then watches as he/she falls overboard.

Then Jess sees the boat. The capsized boat she'd just been trapped on a few hours earlier. This means it was her that they'd all seen lean over the railing.

And so the infinite loop begins. Jess has to dodge her duplicate and find a way off the damn cruise ship. It just so happens that Scarecrow up there was right. Jess does have to kill all of these people to get back home to her son. So she dons the boiler suit, puts on the mask, and picks up the shotgun.

There are some really disturbing visuals of the piled-up bodies of Sally copies that just make me feel even more confused than I already was. Eventually, Jess reaches the point in the time loop where her "first" encounter with herself occurred. She lands in the ocean and wakes up on the beach back home.

I am still really confused.

Jess gets back home and, disturbingly, she overhears herself screaming at Tommy. Apparently she either blocked this from her memory or it's just another plot hole. In any case, Jess sneaks into her house and kills herself. In front of her son who, naturally, freaks out.

Is it considered "suicide" if you stuff your own body in the trunk and happen to be alive to do that?

Whatever. At this point I was glaring at the screen.

So after Mommy Dearest whacks herself and stashes the dead body in the trunk of the car, she proceeds to drive Tommy to school like nothing happened. She's telling him things will "be different" when a seagull rams into her windshield. Add this to the list of traumatic things Tommy's had to deal with in his morning. Jess gets out of the car to toss the gull over an embankment and we see a huge pile of seagulls much like the multiple Sally pile-up. My head really hurts at this point.

It gets worse. I'm just going to spoil the ending because I'm still a little mad at myself for watching this.

Because Tommy is upset about the bird blood still on the windshield, Jess is distracted and ends up steering into oncoming traffic. She is thrown from the car, but Tommy and her dead body are still in the wreckage. Strangely, she ends up standing near a taxi driver (who says nothing can be done for them) and asks him to drive her to the harbor.

Then the movie pretty much starts over.

Remember how I said Jess was a little out of it when she met Greg at the dock? Now we know it's because she's dealing with the whole "I killed my son" thing.

Rotten Tomatoes critics gave it 81% on the tomato-meter (out of 37 critics, 30 gave it a "fresh" and 7 said it was "rotten"). I happen to fall in the other 45% of the audience that did not like this movie. I will admit the acting from Melissa was (as always) great. Perhaps it was just that the story idea was too much for my tiny brain to wrap around—the idea of filling up a cruise ship with dead bodies until one different fractal finally lets her get home when she can save Tommy from herself. Granted, it's a new twist on the whole "stalker killer" trope, but I didn't like these characters.

I get tired thinking about Triangle. On a scale of "NO" to "AWESOME" I give it a half-hearted "Meh."

Who Would Want To Live Forever?

Immortality (or The Wisdom of Crocodiles) 1998

Dir: Po-Chih Leong

Rated: R

Okay, I give. I'm a big fan of vampire movies and I've been trying to find one as unique as Near Dark for a while now. And, while I love 30 Days of Night and its constant level of "this really sucks for these people," I do enjoy the more subtle vampire story even more.

This happens to be damn near impossible to find, by the way.

Jude Law as a vampire? This was too interesting to pass up.

That's better, Jude.

I only stumbled across The Wisdom of Crocodiles (Immortality to those of us in the US) because I've been on a Jude Law "binge." I think I sat here and watched eXistenZ about five times in a row (I'll review that one later). My brain wandered off into La La Land while he chowed down on some truly disgusting looking fish in one scene and I ended up ticking off movies I hadn't seen with Jude.

This one popped up.

It took me ages to find a copy of it—and even then it's only a digital file. But it is available through Amazon.com and (I'm assuming) Netflix.

Jude plays this guy named "Steven Grlscz." That's pronounced "Grill-sh."

No, really. He has no vowels in his last name.

In the opening of the movie, we're introduced to him and his goofy hair as he watches his girlfriend's car get pulled out of a tree. In the background, you can hear one of the mechanics wondering out loud to someone "where all the blood is."

Steven seems to take this news rather well and goes off in search of a new girl. He finds Maria on the Underground platform and stops her from jumping in front of a speeding train. Long story short, Steven gets her to fall in love with him, then kills her all vampire-like, and disposes of the body on the coast when the tide is out.

OH MY GOD, JUDE, I WOULD NOT HAVE GONE THAT DIRECTION WITH THE HAIR.

There is an interesting moment where he demonstrates just how fast he is by sitting way across the room from her at one point, telling her to close her eyes, and BAM! He's right in front of her. It's your basic "I'm showing off" scene that is strangely charming.

He's finally rid of the awful hairdo the next time we see him. He's sketching a lovely woman named Anne (played by Elina Löwensohn) who is an engineer at a building site where she's giving some kids a tour of the place. He strategically sets up a guarantee that he'll meet her later and they end up starting a relationship.

I say "relationship" because Steven doesn't try to trick Anne—he's actually himself quite a bit around Anne. Not like the act he put on for Maria.

The thing is, the police found Maria's body. And they have a link between her and Steven. It's enough of a link that the Inspector (Timothy Spall in a rare "non-creepy-dude" role) and Sergeant (Jack Davenport) question Steven about their relationship. They also follow him for at least a week or so.

Hi, Admiral Norrington!

LOOK! PETER PETTIGREW/BEADLE BAMFORD IS NORMAL FOR ONCE!

Steven keeps an entire hidden library full of scrapbooks with information on the women he's seduced and drained like Slurpees. He also keeps a wooden box with these crystals in it—each one is labeled for the woman it was essentially created from. As Steven mentions later on, he's writing a study on how the human body can actually create crystals when put under high amounts of stress. He postulates that each crystal can have its own emotion attached to it.

How does he get the "memento" crystals after feeding off his victims?

Think "kidney stones."

Yeah, they all look like this, too.

That one hurt me.

Again, like Near Dark, the "v" word is never said aloud. In fact, I'm not even sure if this counts as a vampire movie. Yes, he drinks blood (but says he feeds on the emotion in the blood). Yes, he is ageless. Yes, he's incredibly fast and gifted. But he also has a reflection, no aversion to crucifixes, and can walk around in daylight. That last one is handy considering Steven has a job at the hospital as a medical researcher ("I solve problems"). We do have a scene where he's comforting a young girl while he uses radiation on a cancerous mass in her abdomen. It's very sweet, actually. It shows how he can care for human life—he distracts her and makes her focus on his eyes as he works the machine.

See? Things don't seem so scary when your medical technician looks like this.

Despite his growing attachment to Anne (to me he was clearly in denial of his own feelings) he continues with the somewhat magpie-like act of picking up things she's doodled, writing notes on her character, and drawing portrait after portrait of her. He even tries to copy a swirling doodle she did on some engineering notes but can't quite get it right. So he staples the original in the creepy scrapbook.

He staples his finger.

The next day, on another date, Anne points to the band-aid and asks him what happened.

"This? I cut this saving a puppy from drowning." SMOOCH.

Then there's a scene involving a gang of hoodlums that Steven and the Inspector encountered earlier, but that's more fun to watch without knowing what the hell is going to happen.

Anyway, before I give even more of the plot away to all of this, I have to mention at least two more things. One is the Song Of Solomon. He and Anne recite it to each other and I cannot think of any other instance in film where the poem is used. It's romantic the way they speak it. Not a "lusty" type of romantic but a closer kind of attachment that really feels like it could be love. So it's all the more tragic when you see him later on after they've had a fight and he's folding a rubber sheet to get ready for eventual clean up and body disposal.

Then there's this... Bleeding from the ears is never a good sign. Especially when a new paper cut could make you bleed out.

No, no, no... That's not any better, Steven. That's actually the opposite of "better."

The other thing I need to mention is his depleting strength. He's gone so long without blood that his finger doesn't heal. He has to remember to breathe and keep his heart going. His body is literally eating itself and at one point he loses his eyesight.

See? NO GLITTERING. Much better.

Okay, since the movie is so hard to find, I will give away a little bit of the ending. He can't kill her. Not because he's too weak, but because he just likes her too much. He's spent more time with her than the other women. She's become a part of his life (if you can call it "life") and he forces himself to stay away from her even as he gets hungrier and his cut finger stops clotting altogether. The plot of Steven and his struggle with his survival instincts and his genuine care for this woman is not the only one. The cops are still looking for Maria's killer.

He even gets pulled into a line-up for the toll operator (WHO SAW HIM DRIVING THE "BODY-DUMPING" VAN) to identify at one point.

The secondary plot of the Inspector and Sergeant investigating Steven is actually just as interesting as the primary plot between Steven and Anne. Sometimes this kind of thing can leave one plot thread less wound than the other, but in Immortality both spools are full. It is equally as suspenseful to see Steven grow closer to Anne as it is to watch him speak one-on-one with the Inspector.

The original title comes from a conversation Steven and Anne have about how the brain works—which worms its way from the following block quote into a story Anne has about a watch she stole when she was little. She could afford it, but she just took it—and kept it to remind her of her shame.

"I once knew this doctor—a neurologist. He told me that we don't have one brain. We have three... One that is human built over another that is mammalian built over yet another that is reptilian. So when a psychiatrist asks you to lie down on a couch, you're being asked to lie down with a horse. And with a crocodile."

Steven also does this:

I dare you to try this and not fail.

Draw a portrait with one hand and write the Song Of Solomon with the other! IMPRESS THE LADIES!

I've watched it about three times in a row by now and have come to the conclusion that this story isn't just about how Steven is this odd immortal creature who kills women after he seduces them to keep looking young. It's more about his struggle to accept "letting go." And not from the female perspective at all. This is about Steven letting go. He mentions a childhood memory about falling out of a tree and snagging onto a branch and holding on until his arms were nothing but pain. He doesn't remember landing on the ground at all—he just remembers "the agony of holding on and the wonderful feeling of letting go." It's what he spends the entire time trying recreate and he can only do this by really letting go of the existence he's made for himself. Lonely, painful, and pretty darn illegal.

Proper vampires don't have only ONE facial expression. Some can cry.

And a normal woman gets freaked out when her boyfriend confesses that he wanted to kill her/tries to actually eat her.

This is another one for the "Jenn Recommends It" pile. I need to start reviewing bad movies, don't I?

AMBER Alert

Hard Candy (2005)

Dir: David Slade

Rated: R

So sometimes we get these sleeper films that become cult and thus the focus of independent accolades. We also get real stories that don't fall into the category of "summer blockbuster" or "fall/winter/we're-hedging-for-an-Academy-Award drama." Hard Candy is one of those films that makes you think. Makes you wonder if there's a girl like Hayley Stark out there avenging those who can no longer speak for themselves. The abused, the murdered, the abducted...

To start, we have Hayley herself:

Ellen Page as Hayley. Playing a bright honor student who is only 14.

Hayley Stark has been Internet chatting with this guy named Jeff Kholver (Patrick Wilson). He's 32. He photographs models. At the beginning of the movie, you immediately feel uncomfortable for Hayley—automatically thinking that she's going to be taken advantage of in the worst way by this guy, and wanting her to be rescued by anyone. They chat online and then meet in person at a coffee shop where he buys her a T-shirt, has her model it for him, and then offers to email her a bootleg copy of a Goldfrapp concert. She "convinces" him to let her listen to it at his house with three reasons: One, she's been seen in public with him. Two, It's Goldfrapp. Three, four out of five doctors agree that she is insane. She gets in his car and they take a long and winding road up to his home.

He brings her a drink, but Hayley suggests she make her drink herself. She pours two screwdrivers and Jeff has no qualms in letting this 14 year-old drink vodka. He's none the wiser. By the time she suggests he take her portrait, Jeff has already given off enough skeevy vibes that when he passes out mid-photo session we feel grateful. As he falls to the floor the expression on Hayley's face reveals that she isn't as naïve as we think... Jeff wakes up tied to a computer chair and Hayley has dropped the "innocent" act.

"You remember what I said about never drinking anything you didn't mix yourself? That's good advice for everyone."

He screams for help, but she sprays chloraseptic in his mouth and tells him "next time, it'll be the bleach" and that she knows no one is around to help him. She explains that she has had multiple chat accounts to find him—that as soon as he found out she was older than 14, he'd stop chatting. He feebly denies it and claims the others "weren't interesting," but Hayley knows better. She knows he copied phrases from Amazon.com about certain obscure bands that she pretended to like ("I fucking hate Goldfrapp."). She knows something we, the audience, don't know. Something that passed us as a blip in the coffee shop in the poster for the missing Donna Mauer. When confronted with his behavior by Hayley—tied to a chair and unable to escape her relentless questioning—Jeff resorts to the blame game.

Jeff: You were coming on to me!

Hayley: Oh, come on. That's what they always say, Jeff.

Jeff: Who?

Hayley: Who? The pedophiles! 'Oh, she was so sexy. She was asking for it.' 'She was only technically a girl, she acted like a woman.' It's just so easy to blame a kid, isn't it! Just because a girl knows how to imitate a woman, does NOT mean she's ready to do what a woman does.

I mean, you're the grown up here. If a kid is experimenting and says something flirtatious, you ignore it, you don't encourage it! If a kid says 'Hey, let's make screwdrivers!' You take the alcohol away, and you don't race them to the next drink!

It's something you want blared from a loudspeaker for everyone to understand.

Hayley is methodical. While he was out, she searched Jeff's apartment for any porn—anything at all. But there's nothing. Not even a copy of Playboy. Which, to her (and me), is really "off." According to Hayley, single men don't hang up photos they've taken of barely clothed young girls throughout their home. She needs proof of Jeff's depravity and searches his computer after reading some private letters sent from Janelle, Jeff's previous obsession. His downloads indicate a pattern, but none of the files are on the computer—leading Hayley to believe he has it hidden somewhere. After an unsuccessful attempt to get her to stop, Jeff begins to finally realize he is not dealing with any normal girl (as Hayley says: "There's that word again; 'girl.'"). She grills him and, without a word, discovers he does, indeed, have things hidden away.

"Nothing's yours when you invite a teenager into your home."

As Hayley searches his place again and finds a gun under his bed. She tosses it on the mattress and continues her search. Jeff vainly tries to escape the tight knots she's used to tie him to the chair. But he stops when he hears rattling. There is a safe tucked into the coffee table and covered carefully in a bed of river rocks. She scoots him back out into the living room and asks him for the password. Underestimating her intelligence yet again, Jeff refuses to tell her. But she can read his face. After trying only five combinations, she finds out it's the date that Jeff first photographed (or had sex with) Janelle (the girl in the framed photo he keeps in his bedroom) and only has to guess on the year.

"This is what they make those Federal laws for, Jeff. This is officially sick."

She finds, amongst the photos and CDs labeled "Stuff" a photograph of Donna Mauer outside the same coffee house she met Jeff at. After asking him what was so special about that girl—why she got to "keep her clothes on," Hayley whispers that she recognizes the girl. Jeff promptly kicks her in the ribs and knocks her against a table, having freed his feet, and tries to get to the gun on the bed. Hayley recovers from the blow. By the time Jeff has the gun in hand and has wheeled back to the living room, Hayley seems to have vanished.

She ambushes him from behind, gets slammed repeatedly into the wall, narrowly escapes being shot, and successfully knocks Jeff out with the help of an entire roll of Saran Wrap. Hayley doesn't kill him. Time passes and Jeff wakes up practically hog-tied to that table he kicked Hayley into. And she's since removed his pants and dropped a Ziploc bag full of ice on his crotch. He threatens, feebly, that he'll call the cops and say he's never touched her. Hayley brings out the damning photograph of Donna. He admits to meeting Donna for coffee and claims he took the photo to make her "happy."

Jeff is still trying to maintain that "I did nothing wrong" front.

We then see that, instead of the layers of tank tops, Hayley has the top half of some medical scrubs on. She threatens to send an email to Janelle (whom Jeff is obviously still very attached to) and there is a lot of "Jeff tries to talk Hayley out of this" stuff—then begging once he realizes she's perfectly willing and capable of making good on her threat of castrating him.

"Turns out castration is one of the easiest surgical procedures around. There's thousands of farmboys across the country gelding their livestock. If they can do it, I think I can pull it off. If you know what I mean."

I won't spoil the rest of the movie (seeing as I've spoiled so much of it already), but it goes without saying that it is a tough subject to sit through. There is the implication of image, but we see nothing. By the end of it all I realized there was no "score" to be exact. The emphasis is all on the dialogue and these two characters. We find out just how messed up Jeff really is through Hayley's consistent pushing. It takes a while—long enough that we've been introduced to Jeff's truer nature.

Jeff: Who the hell are you?

Hayley: I am every little girl you ever watched, touched, hurt, screwed, killed.

It's another pertinent quote. Hayley is an enigma. But she really is every little girl out there who is seen as a potential victim or target. She embodies those kids we want to save from the pedophiles and despicable people out there. She also embodies that person we wish that we could have around to look out for those traumatized and abused children. But to my knowledge, there is no Hayley Stark.

"Honors student, remember? Nothing I can't do when I put my mind to it."

In the end she escapes easily and walks down the road—red hoodie flipped up and looking like an avenging angel for all the abused and damaged girls. We don't know who she is and if she's even finished with her mission to find the abductors of Donna Mauer. We don't even know if Donna is the only one Hayley has "investigated." She claims to not have never done some of the things she does to Jeff. She searches his home thoroughly and precisely. She handles herself with a professional air and, for a fourteen year old, is angry in a way that normal teenagers aren't. Hayley claims her "four out of five doctors agree that I am actually insane" quote is true. To be honest, she does seem like a functioning sociopath.

I wish there was a real Hayley Stark around to work as a vigilante for the "watched, touched, hurt, screwed, and killed." So, despite the delicate subject matter I honestly recommend Hard Candy as a serious film to watch. It's dramatic and heart-pounding—carefully constructed to engage us and suck us into the story to leave us with that "what brilliance did I just watch?" feeling.

And like that, poof. She's gone.

Hunting For the Real Antagonist

The Hunted (2003)

Dir: William Friedkin

Rated: R

Yes, that William Friedkin. The one who directed William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist. The man who created one of the scariest films of all time. Users on IMDb rate this particular movie a 5.8 out of 10 stars—considering the harsh grading curve of the site, that's actually on just this side of "It's okay." And while I'll admit I was engrossed in it because of my affection for Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro, there was something... "Lacking."

An antagonist.

Before I get too far into anything, I'd like to mention that Johnny Cash's "The Man Comes Around" is used as a voice-over in the beginning. It's fairly fitting.

"God said to Abraham, 'Kill me a son.'

Abe says, 'Man, you must be puttin' me on.'

God says, 'No'; Abe says, 'What?'

God says, 'You can do what you want, Abe, but the next time you see me comin', you better run.'

Abe says, 'Where do you want this killin' done?'

God says, 'Out on Highway 61.'"

We're given Aaron Hallam (Del Toro) as our supposed antagonist, but I just feel too horrible for him to think of him as anything other than a victim. Remember First Blood and how John Rambo couldn't "turn off" his instinct to kill after the war? That's what Aaron is dealing with. He's Special Forces. At the beginning of the movie he's given an operation in Kosovo to carry out. He saves a lot of American soldiers, but looses part of himself during the brutal fight. The ultimate kick in the face is when he is awarded the Silver Star for his actions.

He goes AWOL after that.

He snapped.

I think this is the reason why I don't feel Aaron can be considered an outright antagonist. Not when my heart is breaking for him as he tries in vain to reconnect with humanity through a woman and her daughter that he's gotten to know since his time in Special Forces. The little girl brings out the curious, human side of him that got lost somewhere between training with Tommy Lee Jones' character, L.T., and being turned loose on groups of militants in a war zone with just a knife. He's been writing L.T. for ages talking about how he's terrified and how the nightmares are worse and he doesn't want to be this killing thing anymore. How L.T. has been like a father to him...

Symbolically, L.T. (who is living in Canada) releases a wolf from an illegal snare and dresses the animal's wound in one of the stranger moments in cinema—one of those things where you swear you know a guy like this and he's a wise man with the patience of the most strong-willed man. Despite his former job of training Special Forces (he isn't military) how to survive in the wilderness and kill with maximum efficiency, L.T. has never killed a man. Halfway through the movie, my brain inevitably linked him with Ben Kenobi.

Aaron hides in the woods in Portland and in his dementia brutally murders two elk hunters (they say "deer" in the movie but show an elk). Though the creepifying conversation they have as Aaron tracks them trough the woods is so cryptic I'm still not sure if the hunters were confused or actually sent out there to kill him. They don't succeed. This gains the FBI's attention and they bring L.T. in to see if he can find their "perps." No one thinks one man could have slaughtered the two hunters on his own.

It's when the two finally meet in the woods that the conflict loses it's credibility. Aaron is obviously conflicted and hurting—paranoid and wary of anyone. He is so damaged that we know within the first few minutes of him talking to L.T. that he will most likely die by the end of the movie.

I did warn you about spoilers...

The FBI manages to arrest Aaron. They don't get to talk to him for very long.

What follows is a chain of events that could have really made the movie much more interesting plot-wise had they not dismissed it ten minutes later with a massive wreck that has Aaron escaping military custody to visit the women he met who seem to ground him back in reality; Irene and her daughter Loretta.

Random fact: The home used in The Hunted where Irene and Loretta live is the same one used in Untraceable. It's a gorgeous home.

He wants so badly to tell her what he's been made to do, but he's terrified of scaring her. She's pretty much the only thing that is real to him in the world. In fact, he tells her he thinks it would be safer for her to leave Portland than stay anywhere near him for her and her daughter's safety. We don't hear what he tells her, but it's apparently convincing enough that she packs her bags and plans on leaving after picking Loretta up from school the next day.

I still haven't seen a flesh-and-blood antagonist. If we really have to pick, I'd say Aaron's mental disturbances. But that's a stretch. In a film like this one, it helps to have an antagonist that wants nothing more than to destroy the main character—and those guys were killed off in the wreck that allows Aaron to escape.

After another brush with L.T. and the FBI, Aaron goes on the run once more and we never hear of Irene or Loretta again. Both could be safe. Or, they could have been killed on their way out of Portland. I hate plotholes.

L.T. is finally given a chance to read one of the unmailed (or returned—it's never explicitly stated) letters addressed to him from Aaron and they all discover just how severe Aaron's lost grip on reality is. He thinks he's being hunted by robots.

Time out.

This? It felt like it was thrown in at the last second like: "Well, why is he all paranoid?" "Robots, dude. Terminators or something." "Sounds good."

No.

I understand leaving the air of ambiguousness in someone's motives leaves more to be discussed later on, but that was way out of left field. Aaron mentions those two elk hunters (still called deer hunters despite showing an elk at least three more times) were "sweepers" sent out after him. No more explanation is given. Though the creepy military guys that explain Aaron can't be held in FBI custody and belongs in military custody really did give off that X-Files vibe. And they were planning on killing him in the back of the transport van with a nasal poison in one of those tiny misting devices.

But we're taken back out into the wilderness after a really epic chase scene after Aaron runs out of Irene's house and takes off for the bridge (honestly, Tommy Lee Jones spends a lot of his career running after people) Aaron dives into the river to escape and L.T. takes it on as his "responsibility" to stop him.

He tracks Aaron down, and after a really painful looking knife fight (the fights, by the way, are amazingly real—the hits actually connect as proven by Del Toro's broken wrist during production) and I can't choose a side. Normally you pick one man to root for in a movie, but I've been hurting for both of them. L.T. never wanted to kill anyone—he just knows how and how to train people. Aaron never wanted to be stuck in that state of perpetual alert—he just wanted to serve his country.

So I guess the real antagonist could be the human conscience, but that feels lame. Even though the outcome was expected, it didn't hurt any less knowing that this man spent most of his life in a state of agony. Not physical, but mental. I think Tommy Lee Jones' action of placing his palm on Aaron's head once it's all over is gut-wrenching. The young man considered him to be like a father and L.T. could not have been that for him.

Aaron was lost.

It's a sad movie. Yeah, there are some amazing fight scenes and the like but my brain keeps cycling back to Fist Blood and that scene that actually makes me cry every time I see it:

Col. Trautman: You did everything to make this private war happen. You've done enough damage. This mission is over, Rambo. Do you understand me? This mission is over! Look at them out there! Look at them! If you won't end this now, they will kill you. Is that what you want? It's over Johnny. It's over!

John: Nothing is over! Nothing! You just don't turn it off! It wasn't my war! You asked me, I didn't ask you! And I did what I had to do to win! But somebody wouldn't let us win! And I come back to the world and I see all those maggots at the airport, protesting me, spitting. Calling me baby killer and all kinds of vile crap! Who are they to protest me? Who are they? Unless they've been me and been there and know what the hell they're yelling about!

Col. Trautman: It was a bad time for everyone, Rambo. It's all in the past now.

John: FOR YOU! For me civilian life is nothing! In the field we had a code of honor, you watch my back, I watch yours. Back here there's nothing!

Col. Trautman: You're the last of an elite group, don't end it like this.

John: Back there I could fly a gunship, I could drive a tank, I was in charge of million dollar equipment, back here I can't even hold a job PARKING CARS!

Really, what do you do with your life if all you know how to do is kill? There is a sweet moment between Aaron and Loretta as he teaches her what the animal tracks in the backyard are, but that looming shadow of "you will never fit in" is still drearily above him

I liked The Hunted. I would have liked it more if the "super-secret-military-'Aaron-Hallam-doesn't-exist'" arc had been left open to explore.

Instead, it feels like Friedkin intended for us to despise Aaron for his brutal actions. Despite how wrong they are, I can't. Either it's because I've seen First Blood too much and my love for Benicio Del Toro's acting is getting in the way, or I'm missing something. Because I feel terrible for him.

The ending tag of the movie is of L.T. back up in his Canadian cabin burning Aaron's undelivered letters that mention his fears and desperation for L.T.'s advice or any sort of response at all. There was some small fleck of hope in those letters. Hope that Loretta and Irene could save him from himself. Hope that he could turn off that killing instinct. Hope that his father figure would hear him and offer up help.

It's bleak. We see the wolf from the beginning return in the distance and the movie ends with the Johnny Cash song again.

So what have I learned from this other than you can give me anything with Benicio Del Toro in it and I'll watch it?

Sometimes, life realistically emulated in film can be too dark. I turned it off feeling drained of happiness.