‘Sicario’ Meets ‘The Fugitive’ in Paramount+’s Gripping Streaming Hit
The 2003 thriller *The Hunted*, directed by William Friedkin and starring Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio del Toro, is finding new life after arriving on Paramount+, according to a Collider retrospective. The piece argues the film deserves renewed attention because it gave Jones a rare late-career turn as a physical action lead, rather than the commanding but largely non-physical roles he typically played in blockbusters of the era.
In the film, Jones plays L.T. Bonham, a former survival instructor recruited by the FBI to track down Aaron Hallam, a mentally unstable ex-Special Forces operative played by del Toro who is killing people in the woods. The film flopped on release, scoring just 30% on Rotten Tomatoes and underperforming at the box office, but the article highlights its committed hand-to-hand and knife combat, with Jones and del Toro reportedly performing most of the fighting themselves after three months of daily training.
- *The Hunted* (2003) is gaining fresh attention on Paramount+.
- Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio del Toro trained for three months for real fight scenes.
- The film flopped in 2003, scoring only 30% on Rotten Tomatoes.
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The Hunted is a 2003 action thriller directed by William Friedkin, best known for The Exorcist and The French Connection. It stars Tommy Lee Jones as a former survival instructor drafted in by the FBI to hunt down a former Special Forces soldier, played by Benicio del Toro, who has been killing people in the wilderness. Both actors were already established names, with Jones having won an Oscar for The Fugitive a decade earlier and del Toro building a reputation for intense character work.
The film was not a success when it first came out, receiving mixed reviews and modest box office returns, and it has largely been overlooked since. It has now resurfaced on the streaming service Paramount+, prompting renewed interest and reassessment more than twenty years after its original release.
This kind of reappraisal is a familiar pattern in the streaming era, where older films can find new audiences once they become easily accessible on a major platform, sometimes leading critics and viewers to revisit works that were dismissed on first release.