The Bounty Hunter
Review
by Anthony Morris
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The Bounty Hunter
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Make no mistake, there's nothing exactly wrong with the idea of basing a romantic comedy on Midnight Run - it's just that this romantic comedy based on Midnight Run is just not that good. Midnight Run,
for those who don't know, is a classic 1980s comedy in which a bounty
hunter (Robert DeNiro) and his captive (Charles Grodin) get into a lot
of pretty hilarious trouble. It's
easy to see why the idea of taking the basic concept and putting a
romantic spin on it would seem like a god idea : it's a buddy movie
where the buddies can fall in love. But again, here it just does not work. It'd
be easy to blame the casting, but while Jennifer Aniston does have a
string of duds to her name there's no denying that she can actually do
good work, sometimes even delivering some decent material. The same
goes for Gerard Butler, even though to date the only examples of his
good work have been in straight dramas (The Ugly Truth was just plain ugly). The
story itself moves along nicely, throwing in a decent amount of twists
and turns as Aniston's hard-boiled journalist finds her investigation
of a suspicious suicide constantly interrupted by the need to escape
out of the boot of the car of her ex-cop turned bounty hunter
ex-husband (Butler) as he tries to claim the bounty for her skipping
bail over an assault charge. But the
characters are mostly annoying, the jokes almost never work, there's
almost no chemistry between Butler and Aniston, the overly complicated
and totally predictable story never once threatens to become exciting
and the whole thing feels like a chore long before the final
credits. Midnight Run isn't hard to come by; if you're looking for something to watch, The Bounty Hunter proves you could do a lot worse.
1
out
of 5
The Bounty Hunter
Australian release: 11th March,
2010
Official
Site: The Bounty Hunter
Cast: Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Amy Ryan, Jason Isaacs, Brendan Gleeson
Director: Paul Greengrass
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