Having been suckered by previews which made it look like an interesting thriller, we rented the abysmal movie “The Hunted”. Like so many other movies like this of recent years, it turned out to be a waste of time and money. While watching and waiting for something, anything to happen I started to get a very clear picture of what likely went down when this cinematic turd was pitched:

Idea Man: The whole thing is based on this secret knife fighting thing that the government teaches to assassins. There’s the mentor and the student...

Studio Exec: Secret government knife fighting... mentor... student... I like. I’m picutring TLJ as the mentor and BDT as the student.

IM: Great, perfect. So... the student goes nuts and “can’t shut it off”, so it’s up to the mentor to take him down, which results in a big chase scene at the end. Lots of fights with slick super-soldier type moves.

SE: Fantastic. What makes him go nuts?

IM: Hmmm. He sees some action... and comes out with... uh... “battle stress”.

SE: That’s it? “Battle stress?” Isn’t there like, I don’t know, a defining moment or some specific event that turns him loopy? And how about a plot twist where he’s not really crazy but being set up by the CIA or something? You know... character development, plot.

IM: You say character development, I say knife fights. You say plot, I say big chase scene.

SE: So, in essence, what you’re proposing is another empty, non-engaging, totally unresolved steaming pile of poo, loosely based on some obscure fighting style, that with A-List stars should be good but most definitely is not, that wastes 99.9% of the time of anyone who watches it, but has cool knife fights and a big chase scene?

IM: Bingo.

SE: Great, roll with it. Next?

IM: Well, we’re completely out of new ideas, soooo... we re-make Footloose, but with a female lead...