Review of The Bounty Hunter (2010) by Chads — 25 Mar 2010

Nicole, an investigative journalist lucky enough to still be writing for a newspaper, skips her mandated court appearance so she can work on her story, and becomes a fugitive of the law. Since her crime is barely a misdemeanor, it seems a bit overblown that a bounty hunter would be warranted for such a minor offense.

This is a police matter, or a PETA concern, but Milo, a former cop, is given the assignment and rejoices at the opportunity to track down his ex-wife. Going into this film, the moviegoer already knows that the bounty hunter will get his woman in more ways than one.

It's the chase, the pursuit of the bounty hunter's former spouse, like a domesticized version of Andrew Davis' "The Fugitive" that might have given this film some heat, had Nicole been hard to outfox.

She's not; she's too easy to find. "The Bounty Hunter" is a comedy all right, but it's the wrong kind: romantic instead of screwball. Even though he incapacitates Nicole by throwing her in a trunk, and she tasers Milo in a motel room(dealbreakers both for most reconciling couples), the old feelings return, as the film jettisons its premise in favor of a routine crime drama, where the bounty hunter becomes "Her Boy Friday" instead.

There's at least one storyline too many, as this tired film completely loses its footing when Milo stops hunting Nicole, and hunts her bounty instead in tandem. "The Bounty Hunter" should have been an all-out war of the sexes: the woman constantly outsmarting the man, like Jane Sibbett in an episode of "Quantum Leap", where she's always one step ahead of the sheriff's body that Sam(Scott Bakula) inherits.