Things I Learned From Movie X: The Bounty Hunter
By Edwin Davies
August 5, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
But this simple case of legalized kidnapping isn't as straightforward as you would think. Nicole's a journalist, and her investigation into a suicide that might be a murder (or something; I'd kind of lost interest by that point) has her in the crosshairs of some mob types. How could hilarity not ensue? Oh right, it's a comedy starring Gerard Butler. Anyway, here are some lessons in life and love that you can take away from watching The Bounty Hunter. Though you'd probably live a richer, fuller life if you didn't.
Man, Midnight Run is such a good film. You should all watch it tonight.
When The Bounty Hunter was first released, comparisons to Midnight Run were thrown around since, much like Martin Brest's film, it focuses on a bounty hunter and his target. And to be fair to the people who made the comparison, The Bounty Hunter is a lot like Midnight Run, if Midnight Run was an awful film starring two people with no chemistry, warmth or sense of comic timing. I always knew that Midnight Run was a good film - how could anyone not fall in love with a film that has Charles Grodin and Robert DeNiro swearing like sailors and bickering like an old married couple for 126 minutes? - but The Bounty Hunter really made me appreciate how much fun it is, in much the same way that listening to any album Paul MacCartney put out after the mid-'70s makes Revolver sound even better. The key difference between the two films isn't the vast difference in quality between the scripts, the lack of energy in the direction, or even the fact that there is no urgency to plot, but that it's much easier to imagine Charles Grodin and Robert DeNiro ever having sex than it is Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler. Those guys had sexual tension to burn.
Tik Tok by Kedollarsignha is no less awful for being set to a gambling montage.*
I don't think I've come across a film with a more arbitrary soundtrack than The Bounty Hunter. There are lots of popular songs on the soundtrack, both old and new, but not a one of them is used in a way which either comments on what is happening, or even helps set a mood or build rhythm in the scenes. What does "Tricky" by Run-DMC have to do with Jennifer Aniston riding a bicycle rickshaw around Atlantic City? And why would you set even a short chase scene to that song? It's one of the least energetic rap songs ever recorded and it saps the life out of what is already a fairly turgid sequence. Watching the film did remind me of something that has always puzzled me, though. Admittedly, I might be taking the lyrics fairly literally, but is the song "Fire Burning" by Sean Kingston about a woman spontaneously combusting in a club? Because that sounds pretty horrific. I wonder if recording the song was some way for Mr. Kingston to work through the issues that arose from having witnessed that. I hope he can finally get to sleep at night, because I sure haven't been able to since I first heard that song. It's haunting.
*And no, I will not write her name the way that she spells it. $ is no substitute for an S.
True love is two people showing absolutely no affection towards each other whatsoever.
At one point in the film, the couple serendipitously (i.e. in an incredibly arbitrary and contrived fashion) wind up staying at the hotel where they spent their honeymoon. One of the owners asks them how they keep the romance alive (As someone whose parents used to run hotels, I can vouch that this a standard, in no way weird and intrusive question.), Butler responds by saying that he never gives cards, flowers or gifts of any kind, and that you'd have to hold a gun to his head to make him say "I love you", which the other owner then says is a sign of true love. And it truly is, because the greatest love stories are the ones in which neither party shows any interest in the other. It goes all the way back to Romeo and Juliet, which famously ends with the starcross'd lovers deciding not to reveal their feelings to each other, moving on and entering into dreary, hateful marriages. It's a tale as old as time.
Gerard Butler is pure, unfiltered evil. He's the Devil in a checked shirt.
To go back to Midnight Run, one of the things that film did really well was show that whilst DeNiro's character was kind of an awful person who had driven away everyone who ever loved him, it also made him to out to be quite a charming rogue. You liked him. You could imagine sharing a cordial drink with him in a bar right before he slammed your head into the bar and carted you off to jail in handcuffs. The Bounty Hunter goes entirely the opposite way, and has Butler do something so despicable that the audience can never develop any sympathy for him. It's one thing for someone to want to gleefully jump around at the prospect of hunting down his ex-wife for profit; it's kind of a dick move, but people do terrible things when they're hurtin'. And maybe it's okay to break into a stranger's house in pursuit of his quarry; it's part of his job. But deleting unwatched episodes of 30 Rock from someone's TiVo? That's cold.