As any of you know reading this, part of my job is counting curse words in films and chronicling content involving alcohol and drug use, guns and weapons, and so forth that may or may not be objectionable for you and others in your household. Reviewing "The Bounty Hunter" is one of the toughest assignments I've had so far. One, because I had so many curse words going on inside my head while watching it, I may have fouled up the numbers this time. Two, I actively wondered throughout if alcohol and a few choice pharmaceuticals would make the experience of sitting through this dreck any more tolerable. Three, if I had a gun, I-
Well, you get the picture.
Oh, where to begin? Let's start at the absolute beginning. The script. Without it, there's nothing to sell, nothing to act, nothing to direct. How do you write a movie as tired and clichéd as "The Bounty Hunter" and even get it read by an agent, much less a studio head? I really want to know.
This is one of those movies that tries to tell its story with the movie poster alone. He's a crass, hairy, 21st century caveman who drives an old convertible and works as a bounty hunter because he couldn't cut it as a cop, but still likes to knock guys around. She's a stuck-up, career-minded, Type A newspaper reporter who has skipped bail because she's the only one who can break a police corruption story. Look at the two of them standing next to each other on the poster, he unshaved in his old jeans and flannel shirt, she perfectly put together in her designer skirt, blouse, and heels. They used to be married. Now they're married to their work, and it's his job to bring her in for a bounty. Will this bickering twosome fall back in love and solve the crime together?
Ugh. The film's only, and I mean ONLY big laugh, comes right in the very beginning when the name of the production company flashes across the screen. It's, and I kid you not, "An Original Film Production." Yeah, right!
There are only two things that can ever really save a movie as hackneyed and overdone as this one. The first is casting, the second is a witty screenplay. As Milo the Neanderthal man and Nicole the Ice Queen, Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston have no chemistry. None. ZERO! They feel so shoehorned into this script, it's just sad. And the script does them no favors. Stanley and Helen Roper bickered more amusingly 30-plus years ago on "Three's Company."
It also features the most cringe-worthy line of dialogue since George Lucas put pen to paper and tried to write young love. Milo goes to Atlantic City to question Nicole's mother (who solos concerts at the Borgata, but for no comic or plot reason). He can't find her daughter anywhere, and he's hoping she can provide a clue. Before she tells him what she knows, though, Christine Baranski has the unenviable task of actually saying these words aloud: "On the outside, she may be a strong, independent woman. But on the inside, she's just a girl waiting to be loved by her man."
Oh, yeah. That's early in the picture, too. At that point, we haven't even gotten to any scenes involving Milo and Nicole's supposedly cutesy, "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" repartee. We haven't gotten to the scenes where he picks her up, hoists her over his shoulder "Quest for Fire" style, and throws her into the trunk of his car. We haven't gotten to the scenes where she tasers him, and he flops comically to the ground quivering like a fish suddenly out of water. We haven't gotten to the wacky chase scene involving a golf cart. We haven't-
I'll stop there. The film was directed by Andy Tennant who made the awful "Fool's Gold" with Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson a couple of years ago. He routinely takes 110 to 120 minutes to make movies that should only be around 90 minutes in length. Having no faith in his audience, he pads his stories with one-note gangsters, unfunny side characters, and unnecessarily convoluted crime plots and then gooses the action with a blaring soundtrack that has a song even for the most minor scene of two people walking from a car into a building.
Here, we are painfully aware that the movie cannot end until Milo and Nicole solve the crime that she is writing about for her newspaper. For anyone who cares, it's some garbage about a homicide made to look like a suicide and involves the creepy guy who raped Ving Rhames in "Pulp Fiction." The point is every time Milo and Nicole detour from this main caper plot to have a romantic interlude that gets foiled by their incessant bickering, you know you are that much farther away from being released.
"The Bounty Hunter" fails to entertain even on the most basic of levels. Only because one montage is set to Jerry Reed's great country classic "She Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft)" do I give it a 1 out of 10. (T. Durgin)
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