When she misses a court date for a traffic citation, reporter Nikki Hurley’s (Jennifer Aniston) bail is revoked and a warrant is issued for her arrest. Bounty hunter Milo Boyd (Gerard Butler) jumps at the chance to bring Nikki in. See, he’s her ex-husband, and she’s the one who initiated the divorce, so he’s looking for a little payback. So he nabs her while she’s in Atlantic City and heads home to cash in, but some detours delay their arrival. And the feelings they once shared are rekindled. And the bookies to whom Milo owes eleven grand are dogging them, and the crooked cops involved in the story Nikki has been trying to break are looking to rub both of them out. And Nikki keeps trying to ditch Milo and sneak off...

CRITIQUE

Every aspect of this movie annoyed me. The performances (more check-cashing from people who should either start making better decisions or simply hang it up altogether) annoyed me, the script (which lazily assembles every cliché this genre has to offer and then even more lazily strings them together in a predictably lazy manner, while at the same time offering up dialog so awful and tin-eared you have to wonder if the writer has ever actually heard an actual human being speak) annoyed me, and the music (including the bouncy, schmaltzy score, unworthy use of both a Marvin Gaye classic and the second-best song from Tattoo You, and a remixed version of “Staying Alive” that exchanges the song’s dance/funk/R&B groove for a synthetic, synthesized beat) annoyed me.

The sluggish pace annoyed me, the bloated runtime annoyed me, and the fact that it managed to take its talented supporting cast (including Jason Sudeikis, Carol Kane, Jeff Garlin, and Christine Baranski) and render them completely unfunny annoyed me. This movie has been mechanically processed to the point that not a single glimmer of wit, humor, or originality is contained within.

Everything here has been done before, most of the time in movies that were also annoyingly cliché and pointless. There’s absolutely nothing here you haven’t seen before. How do I know this? Because I’ve seen it all before, and I do my damnedest to steer clear of this sort of junk.

Even if the trailers didn’t tip you off to just how awful and paint-by-numbers this movie is, there are plenty of other warning signs. It stars Gerard Butler but doesn’t involve a bloody battle between Spartans and Persians. It stars Jennifer Aniston but isn’t titled Office Space or The Good Girl. It’s written by Sarah Thorp, who also wrote the Ashley Judd turkey Twisted. It’s directed by Andy Tennant, whose storied career contains such gems as Fool’s Gold and It Takes Two.

If that’s still not enough, take a look at the artwork that adorns this Blu-ray. Yeah, it’s more generic Photoshop nonsense (depicting a moment that doesn’t even occur in the movie), and as is often the case, the lack of thought behind the artwork is indicative of the lack of thought behind the project as a whole.

Having found success with Sweet Home Alabama and Hitch, Tennant will undoubtedly have no trouble finding work the rest of his days, although he was in no way responsible for the success of either, having been hired to point the camera at Reese Witherspoon and Will Smith, respectively. But pointing the camera at things is about as far as Tennant’s talent extends; anything else is required and he’s immediately out of his comfort zone.

Bounty Hunter features a car chase that also involves a bit of gunplay, a bit more gunplay toward the end, and a scene in which Aniston and Butler dash across a golf course in a golf cart, which inevitably ends as all scenes featuring a dashing golf cart do. Now I’ll go easy on Tennant for botching the car chase and gunplay, but anyone who steps behind a camera should be able to shoot a golf cart taking a plunge into a water hazard and not screw it up. Golf carts in movies have been taking the plunge for as long as they’ve been around, so not knowing how to stage such a moment is a sure sign of a lack of talent. A director who can’t pull that off is like a mathematics professor who can’t do long division without getting a remainder: worthless.

For what it’s worth, though, there is one thing Tennant has down pat, and that’s shooting for product placement. There’s a shot here that lovingly lingers over a bag of snack chips Butler is munching on, and more than a dozen shots are transparently blocked in order to squeeze in ads for one of Atlantic City’s most popular casinos. It’s really something to behold.

The death of network movies-of-the-week has made it possible for projects of dubious quality to achieve feature status. Had this script been around two decades ago, it undoubtedly would have served as the basis for something designed to fill two hours of network programming on a summer night. It would have been made for a nickel, starred two sitcom top-liners, and cost nothing to watch. And it would have been thirty minutes shorter, leaving no room for all of that needless padding involving Sudeikis and the bookies, the endless scene at the honeymoon chapel, or that stopover at the constantly plugged casino.

I’m really starting to think that the absence of the movie-of-the-week and its brethren is why so many horribly written and mounted movies are flooding theaters nowadays. With second-market revenues being what they are, home video has replaced non-series television as the dumping ground for this sort or project. Instead of lazily lounging on their couches and settling on some piece of television drivel featuring recognizable faces, people are now buying and/or renting pieces of cinematic drivel featuring familiar faces, which in turn means more of the same junk is foisted on the world. Ain’t life grand?

THE VIDEO

The 2.35:1/1080p transfer--encoded with AVC onto a 50GB disc--isn’t really a bad one, but the movie’s photography has that same flat, waxy look so many current comedies exhibit, and that never translates all that well to a high-def presentation. There’s also a slight yellow cast to the image, which throws off most colors. But the encode does what it can, and there are numerous occasions where the transfer can be quite effective; this is particularly true of brightly lit exteriors, which often look so good they go a long way toward compensating for the less appealing shots. On the whole, it’s pretty much average as these things go.

THE AUDIO

Thanks to the rote sound design, this disc’s DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track (available in English, French, or Portuguese) doesn’t get to stretch its legs. There’s very little surround activity (just very mild ambiance and a couple directional effects), and there’s really not that much of a spread across the front channels; dialogue and pretty much everything else remain locked in the center channel for most of the movie. Dialogue sounds okay, nothing more. Same goes for the effects (although the gunshots are very, very hollow). Aside from helping bolster the music, the low end takes a nap.

A Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 track is also included, as is an English Audio Description Track. English, English SDH, French, Spanish, and Portuguese subtitles are available.

THE EXTRAS

Making The Bounty Hunter (16 minutes, HD) is an EPK-style featurette. Everyone had a great time working together, the movie’s going to be great fun, blah-blah-blah...

Stops Along the Road (11 minutes, HD) takes a look at the movie’s various locations.

Rules for Outwitting a Bounty Hunter (1 minute, HD) is a waste-of-space montage of clips from the movie.

BD-Live connectivity will allow access to another of Sony’s movieIQ tracks.

Two digital copies of the movie are also included. One is contained on a second disc; the other can be obtained by loading the Blu-ray into a PS3, downloading the copy via an access code, and then transferring it to a PSP.  

FINAL THOUGHTS

I absolutely hate this movie. It contains a shot of Jennifer Aniston feeling herself up and a few gratuitous shots of thong-clad strippers and I still absolutely hate it. What does that tell you?