Believe it or not, it's often more of a challenge to review movies like Bounty Hunters 2: Hardball than it is bigger budgeted and better
constructed movies on one end of the spectrum and the bottom-barrel Asylum junk on the other. A movie like this is the perfect storm of blah, a
movie that gives reviewers precious little with which to work. It's not very good, it's not
egregiously bad, it just sort of is. The movie dives right into, and never moves away from, direct-to-video and low-end Action movie
convention, aiming for some robust
action, some wisecracks, and a buddy cop-romantic interest angle. It does none of them particularly well but it shows a basic competence in all three.
The movie never even so much as lifts a finger to try and find a better way of doing things. It's the cinema equivalent of the kid who sits in the back of
the lecture hall, never raises his or her hand, skates on through with a passing grade, and fades into oblivion without the teacher ever even associating
the name on the roll sheet with a face. Yet duty demands a full review, so here's the abstract, short and sweet: "guy and gal bounty hunters foil a
robbery and find themselves targeted for termination in a movie that's dull and duller but capable of delivering the simplest sort of entertainment fit for
a lazy night of insomnia-induced of channel surfing."
Wait, what sort of movie is this?!
Bounty hunters Jersey (Michael Dudikoff) and B.B. (Lisa Howard) are on the trail of a wanted man. In the process of busting him, they break up an
attempted robbery that puts a strain on their relationship. She walks out on him, tired of the lifestyle and not too keen of living in a self-imposed
fortress. However, they both come under fire when a local bad guy wants them dead for their part in the foiled robbery. He puts out
hits on both of them. Jersey looses what little material goods he has left in the process and comes to find he cannot even trust his closest friends.
If they are to survive, Jersey and B.B. learn they have no choice but to team up once again and track down those who have made the hunters into
the hunted.
Bounty Hunters 2: Hardball lazily goes through the motions, collecting bumbling but likable heroes, bumbling but vicious bad guys, bumbling
but serviceable action, and bumbling bunches of bumbles (whatever...word count) into one bungled movie and playing it all against one another to
generally nondescript, though not necessarily poor, results. The picture cobbles together a few briefly interesting elements and anecdotes, chiefly a
car
wash fight scene with potential, but then it later goes all ridiculous on its audience by pretending that characters can shield themselves from gunfire
with
a
patio umbrella and a plastic table. Generally, however, the movie deals in blandly choreographed action pieces that are all pretty much the same
except for those rare instances when they stand out for better or for worse, as noted above. Aside from the setting, most of them are terribly
repetitious, one seemingly no more intense or really all that different from another. And that's pretty much all she wrote on this movie's action.
Hardball does strive to accomplish a little more than transition from one action scene to the next, though it does so largely to poor
results. Nearly equal
time is given to the Jersey/B.B. relationship that's on the ropes for the duration. For all the tries at the humorous and the heartwarming both,
nothing
really works, not when they break up early in the movie, not when she teases him with a piece of red lingerie in the middle, not when she runs
around town in a
leather getup at the end, and certainly not when he stumbles around trying to make amends in classic "idiot male character" sorts of ways. There
are the makings and a few signs of
decent, even approachable, chemistry between Dudikoff and Howard, but the shoddy, go-nowhere script never really maximizes (and rarely even
touches on) its potential.
Interspersed through the action and the dreaded and largely ineffective and out-of-place romantic humor is the film's generic bad guy scenes in
which they try to show how tough they are, usually by pointing revolvers at one another and seeing if a round is in the cylinder or not by pulling the
trigger with the barrel next to some poor soul's noggin.
Bounty Hunters 2: Hardball features a largely bland but generally stable high definition presentation. Details are adequate, helped more by the
increase in resolution that Blu-ray provides than any real good qualities with the transfer. It appears a bit glossed over and pasty, "enhanced" by light
edge halos and showing fairly crisp but not particularly film-like details. Facial textures are decent but take on a slightly smoothed appearance, ditto
most every other element in the picture. Colors are fair, mostly vibrant but lacking the subtlety seen on the better transfers. The image shows a good
bit of dirt and wear over the opening titles. It cleans up nicely thereafter, but again reveals a significant amount of unsightly debris around 55:30 mark,
a nighttime scene on and around a boat. Black levels and flesh tones are never overly problematic. This is a decent transfer, not nearly as bad as some
and about what one would expect of a budget Blu-ray.
Bounty Hunters 2: Hardball offers a softball soundtrack. The included DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 lossless presentation is dull for the most part,
routine at its best and messy at its worst. There's an OK sense of space and acceptable clarity to the opening Spaghetti Western-styled music that opens
the film, but it's largely downhill from there, not that the tumble is all that steep. Most sound effects, from the sound of walking on crunchy gravel or
smashing glass at a robbery and all the way to gunfire and explosions, lack anything even remotely resembling realism. They're unfocused and
detached,
with the heavier action elements never finding much in the way of potency or aggressiveness. Even at reference volume the track sounds puny;
listeners may find themselves checking the volume level on more than one occasion. Even the fight inside the car wash barely registers anything
beyond a
few tinny whirrs; what should be the film's most exciting sound element comes through about as generically as possible. Even dialogue never finds
much life.
Instead the track just sort of scratches out syllables as it goes along. In short, this is one of the most disappointing Action movie soundtracks available
on Blu-ray.
It's all very much routine at its best and forgettable at its worst, and there's really not much space in between. Bounty Hunters 2: Hardball is a
serviceable movie that's competent in its construction but hardly a movie that stands apart from the crowd. The action is bland and the characters
almost equally so, even if there is a sliver of chemistry between the leads. It's a movie worth a watch if there's nothing other than infomercials on
television.
Echo Bridge's Blu-ray release of Bounty Hunters 2: Hardball offers decent video, bland audio, and no supplements. Rent it on a really slow day.
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