My one line summary says it all. You get essentially the action and the suspense of First Blood and The Fugitive in a hybrid of those two stories. Taken in those terms, it's done middling well; better than many "suspense/action" movies, not nearly as well as the best.
Where it falls down (and where I think most people are disappointed, even if they can't articulate it) is there's no clear morality going on! In First Blood, OK, the villains are the US Govt in either its military version (treats vets badly) or local police version (treats vets badly). In The Fugitive, well the end point business of who framed him gets a bit tangled up, but we understand that the fugitive is a good guy, while his pursuer, just doing his job and doing it well, is a different type of good guy.
But what's going on in this movie? OK, the hunter is the good guy, sure. But is the hunted guy good or bad? Is he justified in his crusade against "authority" or has gone off the rails? Is the business of animal rights what's motivating him or not? Everything to do with his motivations is a jumbled mess; everything to do with the motivations of the US military in hunting him down is just as much of a jumbled mess.
You can justify it, if you have to, by saying that it's movie of witness, not a movie of opinion; it tells you a set of things that happened but not why or what to think. (Some Tarantino is like this.) But come on! If you're going to pull that stunt, you need to work a hell of a lot harder to clarify the extent to which you are no longer an ordinary movie playing by ordinary narrative rules. This movie doesn't do that.
Where it falls down (and where I think most people are disappointed, even if they can't articulate it) is there's no clear morality going on! In First Blood, OK, the villains are the US Govt in either its military version (treats vets badly) or local police version (treats vets badly). In The Fugitive, well the end point business of who framed him gets a bit tangled up, but we understand that the fugitive is a good guy, while his pursuer, just doing his job and doing it well, is a different type of good guy.
But what's going on in this movie? OK, the hunter is the good guy, sure. But is the hunted guy good or bad? Is he justified in his crusade against "authority" or has gone off the rails? Is the business of animal rights what's motivating him or not? Everything to do with his motivations is a jumbled mess; everything to do with the motivations of the US military in hunting him down is just as much of a jumbled mess.
You can justify it, if you have to, by saying that it's movie of witness, not a movie of opinion; it tells you a set of things that happened but not why or what to think. (Some Tarantino is like this.) But come on! If you're going to pull that stunt, you need to work a hell of a lot harder to clarify the extent to which you are no longer an ordinary movie playing by ordinary narrative rules. This movie doesn't do that.