“Bounty Killer” is a film that I’ve been wanting check out, even since hearing about it for the first time. It recently played at this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.
The film takes place when the major corporations have control of all of the world’s governments. Their drive for power and money led society to ruins. Out of all of this chaos, the council of nine rose to take over in the Dark Age. Soon all white collar criminals have warrants out for their deaths. The hunters that are hunting them for sport. Now, they’re out to end corporate greed and provide some sort of retribution to those who survived the apocalypse.
Going into this film, I was hoping that this would be a fun film to the level of “Grindhouse” or “Machete” type of film. Even though this film did meet my expectations, I was surprised that it exceeded them. I was very into this film from the start.
Most of that had to do with co-writer and director Henry Saine with the way that he handles the direction. He does a very good job making sure that everything moves a good pace. Whether it’s the style that Saine uses to get the film’s look to the way that the gory action scenes are directed, it made the film have its fun feel to it. It’s hard to do with the limited budget that he and crew encounters but they did a very good job making the film look right and have action scenes that kept my interest. The other thing that I liked about his direction was the way that he makes the performances work with the story at hand. Saine does a very good job making sure that his main cast made their characters stand out from each other. His cast show some personality to their characters, as they felt different from one another. It was another factor that made me like this film a lot.
The screenplay written by Saine, Jason Dobson and Colin Ebeling does a very good job with the way that they’ve created this grindhouse/pulp comic type story. The screenplay does a very job making sure that the story moves along. Whether it’s the out of control action scenes to the backstory of the characters, the writers did a good job making sure the story had a certain comic book vibe to it. It made the scenes work very well, as it made the film fun to watch. The other thing that I liked about the screenplay was the fact that the characters were good and fun to watch. They felt like they literally came off a comic book page. It helped make these over the top action scenes work for me, as I was enjoying this film. It’s something that you don’t see with these grindhouse type films.
Fans of films like the original “Death Race 2000”, “Tank Girl” and “Machete” are going to love this film. With its homage to grindhouse action films and pulp comics, “Bounty Killer” is fun filled action packed film.
Review Rating: Four Stars
