The Bounty Hunter Review
By Karen Dahlstrom
Prattle of the Exes
Sometime around the sixty-minute mark of "The Bounty Hunter", I was hoping one of the bullets Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston were dodging had my name on it. Unfortunately, I had nearly another hour to go before the film's inevitable conclusion. One would think that the days of the high-concept romantic comedy are over, but, sadly, some seem to find comfort in familiarity. This tale of a bounty hunter chasing his felonious ex-wife is just as eye-rollingly predictable and absurd as you would think, barely skating by on the charms of its stars and supporting cast.
Butler plays Milo Boyd, a former NYPD detective turned bounty hunter. When Milo's not chasing down bail jumpers for his boss (Jeff Garlin), he's dodging his bookie's goons, sent to collect on his considerable gambling debts. His ex-wife, Nicole Hurley (Aniston), seems to have fared better than Milo since their divorce. She's a successful newspaper reporter, with a preposterously lush townhouse in the West Village. But she also has a record. Nicole is out on bail after a minor fender-bender resulted in her "assaulting a police officer". When she chases down a lead on a hot story and misses her hearing, the judge revokes bail and issues a bench warrant for her arrest. Enter Milo.
As Milo and Nicole play their spirited game of cat-and-mouse, working out the mutual animosity that can only come between exes, one would expect some sparks to fly. Or at least, some insight as to why these two crazy kids got together in the first place, and what caused the catastrophic rift that left them still fuming three years later. Neither Butler and Aniston's spark-less chemistry, nor Sarah Thorp's script lets us in on any of these details, nor do we even know why Milo was fired from the NYPD. Perhaps it's due to his remarkable lack of observational skills, which allows Nicole to repeatedly escape from his grasp, as well as landing them both in the middle of a murder cover-up involving drug dealers, evil tattoo artists and possibly his former partner.
Butler is a charming enough fellow, but watching him manically chew the scenery while awkwardly trying to mask his Scottish brogue in a pseudo-Queens accent is downright painful to watch. He's not a natural comic actor, and tends to make up for it with exaggeration. He's afflicted with a case of The Gibsons (as in, Mel) ― he'd be better off toning it down a notch (or a dozen). But for those who are more interested in his abs than his acting, Butler does take the opportunity to galumph around without a shirt. He's dishy to be sure, but sorry to say, it appears the days of "
300" are long gone.
Despite possessing a much keener sense of comic timing than her co-star, Aniston is forced to play the straight man. After spending her last few films looking stern and dead-eyed, Aniston makes a go at returning to hair-tossing, lip-pursing Rachel form, and nearly succeeds in recapturing the spunk and charm of her former "Friends" character. But with lackluster material and playing an unlikeable character in love with another unlikeable character amidst a sea of unlikeable characters, there's not much she can do to keep the film afloat.
Any scant bright moments are supplied by the supporting cast, including Garlin ("Curb Your Enthusiasm"), "SNL"-alum Siobhan Fallon Hogan as his wife, Christine Baranski as Nicole's lounge singer mother, Jason Sudeikis as Nicole's creepy co-worker, Stewart, and Cathy Moriarty ("Raging Bull") as Milo's bookie, Irene. Thorp seems to have either given all the best lines to the supporting characters, or they were able to ad-lib much better material than Aniston and Butler were given.
As I said before, some people find comfort in the familiar. For those looking for a predictable romantic comedy with attractive people that offends (and enlightens) no one, this is your movie. The rest of us would be better off making a run for the border.
