The Bounty Hunter (12a)
Dir. Andy Tennant
Reviewed by Matt Adcock
My name is Milo Boyd, I’m a bounty hunter and this week I got my dream job… tracking down my bail-jumping ex-wife - hotshot reporter Nicole Hurly. What’s not to love about being paid to forcefully take the woman who broke my heart to jail…
That’s what I call job satisfaction!!
Yes ‘The Bounty Hunter’ tells the hackneyed tale of how Milo (Gerard Butler) and Nicole (Jennifer Aniston) are reunited in unlikely circumstances after breaking up – he’s down on his luck whilst she is trail blazing in her journalistic career.
Director Andy Tennant somehow manages to take a potentially amusing scenario and make film so terribly mediocre that it sets the new benchmark for 2010. After the ok first few minutes the novelty of watching the two leads bicker wears off leaving the whole movie to lumber through a boredom inducing, unexciting and generally slapdash generic romantic-comedy-thriller set up.
I’ve never been a fan of Aniston – can she ever play anything other than Rachel in Friends? – so seeing her getting roughed up by Butler did provide some short term amusement. But the limp ‘action’ scenes coupled with face poundingly dim ‘romantic comedy’ elements become very dull, very fast.
Don’t just take my word for this though, I bumped into my friend Jeremy who had picked the film for his Birthday night out with his wife. He told me afterwards that he dosed off “at least four times” whilst watching – a damning indictment indeed.
Words can’t really describe how weak The Bounty Hunter is, Butler seems to be on autopilot all the while, his ready charm and hangdog charisma having gone AWOL. He’s still the best thing about the film – the low point being Jason Sudeikis's toe curling role as Stewart, a supposedly ‘comic’ colleague whose only good contribution is getting captured and tortured by the film’s lightweight bad guys.
The ‘exciting’ climax turns out to be a lame and brief gunfight which seems like very little payoff for having sat through almost two hours of soggy sludge.
This is the sort of film that gives cinema a bad name, and it stands out as a cash in that is trading on the names of the stars. Perhaps if you’re a massive fan of Butler and / or Aniston you might be prepared to tolerate The Bounty Hunter but your expectations should be set to low.
UNSEEN DELETED SCENE:
Butler goes insane beats Aniston to a bloody pulp and shacks up with her much hotter younger sister played by Ellen Page – everyone goes home happy!
Darkmatters rating: öööö (4 weak rom-com-efforts out of 10)
Darkmatters quick reference guide: Action 5 / Style 5 / Babes 5 / Comedy 4 / Horror 6 (Aniston’s wrinkles are getting bad) / Spiritual Enlightenment -2
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