The Bounty Hunter Blu-ray offers solid video and audio, but overall it's a mediocre Blu-ray release
Milo Boyd, a down-on-his-luck bounty hunter, gets his dream job when he is assigned to track down his bail-jumping ex-wife, reporter Nicole Hurly. He thinks all that's ahead is an easy payday, but when Nicole gives him the slip so she can chase a lead on a murder cover-up, Milo realizes that nothing ever goes simply with him and Nicole. The exes continually one-up each other – until they find themselves on the run for their lives. They thought their promise to love, honor and obey was tough – staying alive is going to be a whole lot tougher.
"From the director of Hitch." Those aren't
exactly confidence-inspiring words for movie enthusiasts, but they're not particularly deal-breaking
bearers of end-of-times prophesies, either. No, they pretty much say "here comes another
midlevel clunker with a few name actors and a potential not fully realized." Indeed, that's a fine
summation of both Hitch and The Bounty Hunter, the latter a box office success
that pulled in just over
$67,000,000 domestic gross no doubt fueled by the mere presence co-stars Gerard Butler (The Ugly Truth) and
Jennifer Aniston (Office Space). That's
a pretty fair haul for a movie defined by nothing other than a crafty premise and two big stars.
One problem: the
movie proper fails to deliver on the promise of marital
misery spliced together with action and laughs. It's another case of good idea/bad execution, and
it's
easy to tell from the get-go that all involved in The Bounty Hunter pretty much phoned it
in and let the premise and posters do the talking instead.
Critics...grrr...
Nicole Hurley (Aniston) is an investigative reporter who's about to discover a disturbing secret
behind a recent suicide. She's also a fugitive from justice for having skipped out on her bail
hearing. Enter Milo Boyd (Butler), a low-level bounty hunter with a penchant for gambling who's
has been hired to bring Nicole in. It's another easy five grand for Milo, but he's got some extra
motivation on this case: Nicole is his ex-wife, and he'd love nothing more than to catch her,
handcuff her, bring her in, and shame her. Nicole proves a touch catch, though; she knows Milo
and is able to weasel her way out of his custody on more than one occasion, but the chase evolves
into something neither one of them counted on. Nicole's investigation into the mysterious suicide
has the local criminal element up in arms and hot on the couple's trail. Can Milo and Nicole evade
the bad guys and can Milo bring his ex-wife in, all without the two of them turning up dead or --
worse yet -- falling back into love?
The Bounty Hunter has two things really going for it: a decent idea and
two high-profile stars. Unfortunately, neither of them make a lick of difference in the final product.
For
a movie that promises the moon -- a combination Romantic Comedy/Action hybrid seems the
perfect
ticket for hard-to-please moviegoing couples who normally can't decide between Predators
and Letters to Juliette -- The Bounty Hunter fails to even tie up the lasso to try
and rope it in. This seems like the very definition of a half-hearted effort if there ever was one.
For
starters, the picture is painfully slow; it lumbers about for a good 30 minutes before really getting
anywhere, and everything that follows is so utterly predictable that the movie loses every last bit
of steam it had and any semblance of the allure the premise promised. The "comedy" is tired and
uninspired; The Bounty Hunter moves from one stale joke to the next without even trying
for anything new and fresh, instead piling on and seemingly enjoying beating its audience -- who
paid good money for the privilege of being duped into this mess in the first place -- to a pulp with
the hardcover edition of "Comedy for Dummies." All that's missing is the 4" long red lump sticking
out from the middle of someone's head; at least that would take the victim's mind off the movie.
That brings the analysis to the bread-and-butter of The Bounty Hunter, the action and the
romance. Of course -- and no surprise judging by what's preceded this section of the review and
the movie score above -- both prove pretty weak elements in a movie that doesn't exactly offer a
strength beyond a couple of bullet points that probably existed on some pre-production studio pitch
Powerpoint. As to the former, well, The Bounty Hunter is certainly no Die Hard, but it doesn't
need to be. Unfortunately, it's not even Paul Blart: Mall Cop.
Wait, what? Was that an action scene that just went by? Sorry, didn't notice. The worst part of
The Bounty Hunter, however, comes in what should have been its strength: its actors. To
be blunt, Butler and
Aniston share absolutely no chemistry. It's amazing considering that they're both solid actors, but
even the best actor can't rescue the worst movie. There's a complete phoniness to their
relationship; whether they're arguing or trying to make up, they demonstrate no sizzle and no
sincerity. All that's there is the notion that Director Andy Tennant was just doing all he could to
try and salvage the coupling, force-feeding some semblance of spunk into the pair by
directing them to go so over the top that the relationship loses its foundation and sucks the life
straight out of the entire premise.
The quality of The Bounty Hunter's Blu-ray transfer fares better than the quality of the
movie,
but it's still a couple of notches below Sony's usually lofty standards. Indeed, the transfer offers
more
hits than misses, but the misses become something of an eyesore that further detract from
whatever
enjoyability exists within the film. Colors more often than not take on a decidedly warm tint in the
now-traditional RomCom visual scheme, but some shades positively sparkle; the red, white, and
blue
hues seen during an early Fourth of July parade are very impressive. This warmth carries over to
flesh
tones, giving most characters the look of a bad sunburn or a botched tanning bed session. Speaking
of
faces, they look very pasty and far too smooth throughout the entire movie. It's hard to say to
what
degree, if at all, noise reduction was applied; fine details outside of faces rarely suffer to such an
extent. Indeed, details in buildings and other various elements throughout the movie
more often than not look magnificent; though the image looks somewhat flat, there's rarely an
absence
of clarity across the entire frame. Even long-distance elements -- street signs and brick textures far
off in the distance as seen during several street-level city shots and sweeping flyovers -- retain a
startling level of clarity and sharpness throughout the movie. The picture is positively free of
unwanted debris or random print anomalies, but there is at least once instance of moderately
severe
aliasing visible on a building façade. The Bounty Hunter is one of those transfers that looks
gorgeous at-a-glance, but further inspection reveals some flaws that aren't deal breakers, but they
do
knock the overall score down a couple of notches from where Sony's new releases generally reside
in
the 4.0-4.5 range of the picture quality scale.
The Bounty Hunter arrives on Blu-ray with a serviceable but ultimately forgettable DTS-HD MA
5.1 lossless soundtrack. This one's by-the-books and not at all engaging, but it does what's asked of it
in support of a very pedestrian movie. Dialogue is generally stable with only a hint of mushiness in a
couple of scenes. The track lacks a strong ambient support structure; for all the scenes that take place
outside and in the middle of the city, on the freeway, or inside a busy casino, there's very little in
terms of engulfing or realistic ambience. The casino sequence in chapter six proves particularly
disappointing; for such a lively locale, the track seems surprisingly dead and happy to get by with the
bare minimum of effort. A few discrete effects manage to sneak into the track, notably in the form of
golf balls whizzing through the soundstage in one scene, but there's very little of note otherwise. The
action scenes sound as insipid as they look, and the track rarely delivers anything resembling a
vigorous low end. Several popular songs play throughout the film and make for the track's strongest
asset. The beats are wonderfully rich and clear, with good spacing across the front but only a minimal
surround support structure. All told, The Bounty Hunter's Blu-ray lossless soundtrack does
little more than show up, but with a movie like this, it's hard to ask for much more.
The Bounty Hunter tracks down a few extras for this Blu-ray release. Making 'The
Bounty Hunter' (1080p, 17:42) features cast and crew talking up the movie and one another
while discussing how much fun it was to make. There's also some chitchat about the film's stunt
work. Stops Along the Road: Hunting Locations (1080p, 11:21) takes a closer look at the
"Road Trip" elements found in the film and the process of shooting in various places around the East
Coast.
Rules For Outwitting a Bounty Hunter 1080p, 1:21) is a little fluff piece that takes
elements from the film as a series of "rules" for escaping the clutches of a bumbling bounty hunter.
Also included is BD-Live functionality; MovieIQ connectivity; and 1080p trailers for The Back-Up Plan, Chloe, Get
Low, The Runaways, Nine, Extraordinary
Measures, Dear John, Not the Messiah, and
The Pillars of the Earth. Additionally, two digital copies of The Bounty Hunter are
included. The iTunes digital copy is found on a separate disc; sampled on a 2nd generation iPod
Touch, the image proves mostly stable, crisp, and nicely detailed, with some compression artifacts
popping up, usually around the
darker corners of the frame. The audio track is fine if not a bit shallow across the two tiny
headphone channels. Dialogue is satisfactory, ambience is decent, and sound effects and music
come across as suitably strong and crisp. A PSP-compatible digital copy, found on the Blu-ray disc
and accessible through a PS3, is also included, but it was unavailable for redemption at time of
publication.
Lame. What else is there to say? The Bounty Hunter is a perfect example of a good idea
gone sour. The direction and pacing are sluggish, the lead actors lack spunk and spirit, the laughs are
stale, the action is insipid, and the movie is a good 20 minutes too long. Everything the movie got
right exists only on paper rather than celluloid: a good idea and two quality actors in an
Action/Romance/Comedy hybrid. What could possibly go wrong? Watch and find out, or better yet,
don't. Sony's Blu-ray release of The Bounty Hunter is no great shakes, either, but the
technical presentation is decent enough, and for those that just can't get enough of the movie, two
digital
copies are included. Worth a rental on a "rent one get one free" night.
The Bounty Hunter was easily the top-selling title on Blu-ray during the week ended July 18, according to data from Nielsen VideoScan First Alert. Avatar climbed back to second place. The other major theatrical release of the week, Our Family Wedding, only made ...
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has announced The Bounty Hunter for release on Blu-ray on July 13. This romantic comedy/action film, starring Gerard Butler as a bounty hunter hired to track down his bail-jumping ex-wife (Jennifer Aniston) grossed $64 million at ...
