Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
4/10/10
I created
this website as an outlet for my cinematic musings and maintain it without
payment for a modestly sized audience (thanks for being a part of that,
by the way). As such, it takes all the energy I can muster to seat
myself at my laptop and discuss a movie like The Bounty Hunter,
Andy Tennent's latest limply frantic would-be crowd-pleaser. It pairs
Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler in what sounds like a clever idea, gives
them just enough good material to fill the trailer and then, well, whatever
it does, it does it much too long. While it's never as physically
painful as a truly awful movie, one is hard-pressed to think of a recent
movie more unnecessary, and I often contemplated simply closing my eyes
and hoping a theater employee would whack me over the head with a mop to
awaken me once the credits had rolled.
Nicole
Hurley (Jennifer Aniston) is an ambitious print journalist divorced from
cop-turned-bounty hunter Milo Boyd (Gerard Butler). She misses a
court date trying to track down a lead for her latest story and ends up
as a job Milo's boss Sid (Jeff Garlin) hands him over the 4th of the July
weekend. A gleeful Milo enjoys hunting Nicole down and begins the
process of hauling her off to jail, but it quickly becomes clear that somebody
wants her (and, by extension, them) dead to silence her investigation into
a cop's suicide. While they investigate to try and track down the
criminals responsible, bookie Irene (Cathy Moriarty) sends two goons after
Milo to collect some outstanding gambling debts and Nicole's coworker Stewart
(Jason Sudeikis) stalks/helps her. While bouncing from one hotel
room to another on the road, the two exes start to realize that their love
might not be quite so dead as they thought.
That
may be the shortest plot synopsis on the site, and I kinda padded it out.
The Bounty Hunter hopes to combine romantic comedy and action in
the same way a bazillion more successful movies before it have, but runs
into trouble because it's not terribly romantic, funny or exciting.
Butler's a funny guy, and the glee with which he initially attacks the
chance to drag his ex off to jail is a hoot. An early scene that
finds him laying petty waste to her apartment (dunking her toothbrush in
the toilet, eating Doritos off her expensive bedspread) while waiting for
her to come home contains about half the movie's total laughs. He
and Aniston make an attractive couple and have good chemistry, but writer
Sarah Throp has no idea what to do with them or their predicament, and
the police impound conspiracy (or something like that, my brain rebelled
as I tried to keep the banal details straight) they're tracking may be
the least engaging story ever used as a pretense for “action”, or in this
case one mild car chase and a “fight in the warehouse” climax that could
have been exacted with the same gusto by Snickers spokespeople Betty White
and Abe Vigoda.
Andy
Tennent and I just don't see eye to eye. His style has sold a lot
of tickets (particularly to Hitch and Sweet Home Alabama),
but he's always playing to the back row, blaring pop music at us at every
turn and demanding that his actors ham it up at every opportunity.
Aniston, who tends to stick to a relentless baseline of professional cool
in roles like this, skillfully resists said mugging, although Butler shows
embarrassing willingness to mime his way through getting hit by golf balls
and other shenanigans. Despite its name stars, The Bounty Hunter
looks cheap and low-rent, and Oliver Bokelberg's TV-style cinematography
seems called upon to make a point only when Tennent thinks the wrinkles
or fat of one of his actors is hilarious (if Siobhan Fallon Hogan would
care to sue over the aggressively unflatting way she's photographed for
laughs, I would be willing to testify on her behalf, although if anyone
else wants to sue her for the way she strangles her every line to death
demanding that it become funny, I will also take the stand against her).
The
performances by anyone not billed above the title are nothing to write
home about. Sudeikis falls somewhere between dreadfully miscast and
just dreadful, although the Stewart role, like so much of the movie, is
like the warmed-over leftovers of a fun running gag. Baranski is
a professional scene stealer, but is given very little to work with here
(although in her defense, she does get a laugh with her first line on delivery
alone even though it doesn't make a lick of sense). I could go on
all day calling out bit players who go bananas hamming it up to diminishing
returns, but honestly most of the cast doesn't have pictures on IMDB, protecting
their anonymity.
The
story is surprisingly light on heat, romance or excitement, preferring
to simply let its stars wander from one location to another while disliking
each other a little less each time. I wouldn't be surprised if The
Bounty Hunter was chopped down from a longer cut: some of the
scene transitions are quite ragged, and it's hard to imagine that what
we see of the mystery/action plot is really all there is. But at
one hour and fifty minutes, it already overstays its welcome by at least
a half hour. I'm getting sleepy just writing about it, and please
don't ask me tomorrow who the killer turned out to be. I didn't even
really know for sure who the victim was. I know the police impound
locker was involved somehow. And Nicole's missed court date had something
to do with assaulting a horse.
What
movie am I talking about again? |
