The Hunted - final Knife fight scene

The 2003 flick The Hunted - loosely based on the life of Tom Brown jr. I believe, was for me a bit of a shit show. The knife fight scenes with the combatants displaying the filipino fighting art Sayoc kali.
As was the final scenes where each of the dudes were making knives in their own styles. 

William Friedkin’s 2003 thriller The Hunted is not a remarkable film. The movie sees Tommy Lee Jones track rogue assassin Benicio Del Toro who in turn is hunting and killing the most dangerous game of all, man. It’s a potboiler of a thriller for sure but the film distinguishes itself with some heart pounding, visceral fight sequences.

The film’s credits list two knife fight choreographers, Thomas Kier and Rafael Kayanan, both practitioners of the Filipino martial art, Sayoc Kali (The Art of the Blade). Del Toro and Jones worked extensively to ensure the hand-to-hand combat in the film had a realistic and brutal feeling to it. Friedkin pulls no punches in filming these fights and a lot of credit goes to the sound department for making every cut sound suitably squishy.

There are a number of standout fights in this film. At one point Del Toro dispatches two heavily armed agents with nothing but his trusty knife. Jones and Del Toro face-off a couple of times in the film, there’s a good hand-to-hand encounter in a wooded area a little ways into the film that ends with Del Toro taking a sleeping dart to the back. However, The Hunted‘s best sequence comes at the close of the film when all bets are off and the two men must battle it out for survival.