While it's abundantly clear that William Friedkin has lost his chops as a director, he still has bombast aplenty. He kicks off his latest milestone on the road to mediocrity with Johnny Cash intoning Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited ("Oh God said to Abraham, 'Kill me a son'") with all the brimstone rumble of an Old Testament prophet.
What follows is a ho-hum chase flick that doesn't even have the good grace to sink under the weight of its pretensions. It simply shrugs them off, as if Friedkin forgot all about them until the man in black returns for the end credits.
Some good ideas are squandered here - Del Toro's killing spree being hardwired into his psyche by genocidal slaughter in Bosnia and the whole father-son 'motif'. But what is truly painful is the sight of Tommy Lee Jones galumphing through the woods as if anyone with active membership of the Ramblers' Association could give him the slip.