"The Bounty Hunter" Review - Written by Anthony T

The Bounty Hunter
Year: 2010
Director: Andy Tennent
Stars: Gerard Butler, Jennifer Aniston, Peter Greene
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Studio: Columbia Pictures
Running Time: 110 Mins






Going into “The Bounty Hunter”, I was going into the film thinking that it would be a fun and entertaining action comedy like in that vein of “Midnight Run” meets any romantic comedy. Instead, I watched a film that lacks in humor and action scenes that don’t get you in the mood.

The film is about a bounty hunter (Gerard Butler), who finds out that his next assignment is finding his ex-wife (Jennifer Aniston), who skips her court date when she gets a lead on one of her stories, which involves a murder cover up within the police force. They begin to one up each other, as she tries to slip away from him. But when the two get deeper their findings in the cover up, they begin to run for their lives. As they run for their lives, they give new meaning to their promise to love honor and obey.

The first thought that I had when I walked out of theater of this film was the thought of a wasted opportunity. “The Bounty Hunter” looked like a film that could be fun to watch, but in the end was just unbearable to watch. The main reason why this is very bad was Andy Tennent’s directing. The direction was just horrible. This film felt like it didn’t have a pulse, as everything on the screen felt dry. The action sequences didn’t have the intensity that it is needed to make the action work and the acting from Bulter and Aniston was just horrible.

The action sequences in the film weren’t exciting enough to get me to get into the flow of this film. The reason the sequences didn’t work here, it seemed to me that Tennent didn’t really care about the action, as some of the scenes were just flat and no emotion. In these action/comedies, you need scenes that generate some suspense to get you into the film’s flow. There was none of that here, because the chases were boring plus the fact that it generates no reaction. You need reaction or adrenaline to those chases scenes or else the scenes don’t work.Time and time again in this film, there was none, which loses your interest.

Also, the acting was painful to watch. If there is one thing that I learned while watching this film, it’s the fact that Gerald Butler should not be allowed to make comedy films. He is humorless in this film. Butler makes this character like the characters in his previous films, “Gamer” and “Law Abiding Citizen”. Very bad ass and very broody. That is what really makes this film bad. Blame also has to got to Tennent, as he makes no attempt to help Butler develop a personally to generate laughs and develop chemistry with Jennifer Aniston. It was like they were both acting in two different movies with Butler being that the actor that thinks he an action film. It makes the lead acting very badly, which in turn makes the screenplay and anything else worthless.

The screenplay by Sarah Thorp was also not as good as the film. One of the reasons why this screenplay doesn’t work, the humor wasn’t there for over two thirds of the film. It really dragged the film down, as some of it was predictable and some of it just felt dry. Dry humor with a plot line like this has never worked for me, because I want to laugh when I watch a film like this. For most of the film, I didn’t. Thorp also didn’t do a good job making the characters likeable. With the exception of Aniston’s character, there wasn’t a single character that got my interest here. Butler’s character felt like something out of a straight up action film and you have supporting characters were just flat out annoying to the point that made me disgusted with this film. That’s not the type of film that I signed up to watch.

If you want to see a funny action bounty hunter film, then I suggest you rent “Midnight Run” with Robert Deniro and Charles Groden. That was a funny action film filled with humor and action. I wished, the filmmakers watched that film and used it as a blueprint for this one. It would have been a whole lot better than what I saw.

“The Bounty Hunter” is film that has a workable premise, but it fails miserably at executing it to make this a very boring and horrible film.

Review Rating: One Star