Hunt to Kill

Introduction

Jim Rhodes (Steve Austin) is a Border Patrol agent and skilled survivalist serving on the Mexican border with partner Davis (Eric Roberts), who presents him with a watch to celebrate his upcoming promotion. Niceties out of the way, the duo raid a supposedly abandoned drugs lab that isn't actually abandoned, and in the ensuing chaos Davis is killed and the lab disintegrates in an explosion. Still, at least he got his watch before the raid...

Four years later and Rhodes is still with the Border Patrol but in country now amongst the mountains and huge swathes of forest. A complicating factor in his life is daughter Kim (Marie Argeropoulos) who is staying with her father for two weeks of father/daughter bonding. This would be fine if Kim didn't find the rural life totally boring, despises her father and finds excitement in shoplifting.

Meanwhile back in the city, gang boss Lawson (Michael Hogan) has pulled off a daring heist with his gang and walked away with a fortune in bearer bonds. Lawson wants the money for himself and double crosses the gang who he expects to die in a bomb he cunningly hid in a bag that was supposed to have money in it. Unfortunately for him, psychotic number 2 Banks (Gil Bellows) not only finds the bomb but luckily guesses which wire to cut to defuse the bomb, and the chase is on for revenge. Lawson decides to head into the mountains and forests...

And so Jim Rhodes gets a phone call from the local Sheriff to come and pick up his daughter, but get there at the same time as Banks and the gang. Banks kills the Sheriff and takes Kim hostage, making Jim Rhodes guide them into the forest in pursuit of Lawson - not knowing that Kim is Jim's daughter. Rhodes must use all his skills as a hunter/tracker to resolve the situation and ensure his daughter's safety...

Overall

This is not a spectacularly original film, rather just another derivative of the standard chase movie. The premise is generally the same with only character traits being slightly different. The premise of this film doesn't really stretch the acting skills of Stone Cold Steve Austin much as being a hostage and a tracker combined, he would in reality spend much of his time looking stone faced and being silent. The gang also has the usual mix of stereotyped characters, the psychotic ruthless boss, the sexy female, the hardass Brit, the geek, etc.

How the plot unfold is a little bizarre, the general scope of these types of films is that the bad guys are taken out by the good guy(s) one by one. Here the stupidly psychotic Banks, rather overacted by Gil Bellows, takes out half of his gang himself and thus saves Austin the bother. In fact the only decent scrap he gets is with Brit martial artist cum actor Gary Daniels, and even then he appears to take a bit of a pummeling before defeating him - still, he did get shot and forced over a sheer drop, cauterised the wound and then forced over a sheer drop again. Its not like he was badly injured or bruised or anything.

As per usual, character development is next to zero with only Austin's character having any kind of known background, sketchy as that is. Therefore you really don't care who gets bumped off, I was hoping at one point that the whiny daughter would get bumped off but you can't have everything. It also appears that the end is rushed and that Gil Bellows character really is pretty stupid, else the script writers realised late on that they needed proper resolution. Either way, it's one of the worst top villain endings I've ever seen and worst villain final monologue. I like Gil Bellows, but he is dire in this.

Still, it's all pretty dire really so avoid if you can.