Film Review: The Bounty Hunter (2010)
Gigli. The very word is enough to send a shiver down the spine of any seasoned cinephile—a term that, nearly a decade after its release, still induces trauma in those unfortunate enough to have sat through that particular Hollywood atrocity from beginning to end. It stands as shorthand for everything that can go catastrophically awry when a high-concept romantic comedy misfires; a cautionary tale that no amount of PR wizardry, star power, or marketing expenditure can salvage a picture when those involved simply cannot—or will not—do their jobs properly. Alas, this warning appears to have been lost on the creators of The Bounty Hunter.
The premise is depressingly familiar. Gerard Butler plays Milo Boyd, a former New York policeman now scraping a living as a bounty hunter, whilst Jennifer Aniston portrays Nicole Hurley, his ex-wife and a journalist for the New York Daily News. Their professional paths collide when Milo is tasked with apprehending Nicole, who has skipped bail on a minor charge in order to pursue a lead for a story, thereby becoming a fugitive. Milo's motivations are mercenary—he needs the money to settle gambling debts—though it soon emerges that Nicole has also attracted the unwelcome attention of criminals she has antagonised through her reporting. Forced together to save their skins, the estranged couple must re-examine their fractured relationship.
The parallels with Gigli are difficult to ignore. Both films attempt to splice romantic comedy with crime thriller; both feature on-screen pairings that fuelled tabloid speculation about off-screen dalliances; and both suffer from direction so lackadaisical one might suspect the director was working with his left foot. Screenwriter Sarah Thorp attempts to paper over the absence of genuine wit with a succession of unconvincing, cliché-ridden action sequences, but these merely compound the tedium.
Yet the cardinal sin—worse even than the plodding direction or the humourless script—is the utter lack of chemistry between Butler and Aniston. This deficiency extinguishes whatever residual sympathy the audience might have mustered for their characters. To be fair, The Bounty Hunter is marginally superior to Gigli: the running time is shorter, rendering the ordeal somewhat more bearable, and those so inclined will doubtless appreciate that Aniston spends a considerable portion of the film in décolleté. These meagre consolations, however, scarcely justify squandering 105 minutes of one's life upon such disposable fare.
Rating: 2/10
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