The Bounty Hunter is a film that wants to be three things at once: a romantic comedy, an action thriller, and a crime comedy. It succeeds at none of them. Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston star as Milo Boyd and Nicole Hurley, a bounty hunter and his bail-jumping ex-wife who find themselves on the run from a corrupt cop, a mobster and a lovestruck coworker. The setup is simple. The execution is not.
Trailer, via Sony Pictures Releasing UK.
Milo and Nicole: The Engine That Doesn’t Run
Milo is a former New York police detective turned bounty hunter. Nicole is an investigative reporter who skips her bond hearing after assaulting a police officer. Their ex is the story’s entire reason to exist. The film’s marketing leaned on the idea that two people who know each other’s every weakness could make a funny chase. Instead, it just makes two people who hate each other chase each other.
The film’s central problem is that Milo and Nicole are supposed to be a team. They aren’t. They are two people who have spent years fighting with each other, and the script keeps asking them to find chemistry where there is none. The film’s tagline promises that the job isn’t personal. It is. And the film cannot decide whether it wants that to be a joke or a threat.
Butler and Aniston do what they can. Aniston plays Nicole as a driven, competent journalist who is genuinely worried about a murder she has uncovered. Butler plays Milo as a frustrated, slightly dim bounty hunter who is more interested in the money than the chase. Together, they should be a pair of warring exes who find themselves thrown together. Instead, they are two leads who spend most of the film talking past each other.
Irene, Sid and the Rest of the Cast
The film’s supporting cast is where things improve slightly. Ritchie Coster plays Sid, the bail bondsman who hires Milo to bring Nicole in. Jeff Garlin plays Sid with a mix of desperation and self-interest that makes him a decent comic presence. Cathy Moriarty plays Irene, the bookie who sends thugs after Milo because of his gambling debts. Irene is a cartoon, but she is a cartoon with a certain menace.
Jason Sudeikis plays Stewart, Nicole’s coworker who is obsessed with her. Stewart is the closest thing the film has to a fully realized character. He is a lovestruck man who cannot understand why Nicole keeps running from the man he thinks is her captor. He is also the reason Irene’s thugs kidnap him by mistake. Sudeikis does the heavy lifting here, and the film barely gives him a chance to pay it back.
Carol Kane is Dawn, Nicole’s mother, who helps Milo find Nicole at a race track in New Jersey. Peter Greene and Joel Marsh Garland round out the cast as Mahler and Dwight, the corrupt cop and the mutual friend who may be involved in the murder Nicole is investigating. None of them get much to do beyond move the plot forward.
The Chase: Escapes, Stalkers and a Crash
The film’s central mechanic is the chase. Milo catches Nicole, she escapes, he catches her again, she escapes again. The pattern is simple, and it would work better if the film had a sense of stakes. It does not. The film keeps repeating the same beats: Milo drives, someone tries to stop him, he fights back, and the chase continues. The pattern is so predictable that the audience can guess what comes next before the characters do.
The most memorable moment in the film is a crash involving Nicole’s car. Earl Mahler, the corrupt cop, pulls alongside Milo and tries to shoot Nicole. He misses, and then he crashes. He gets away by hijacking a passing car. It is a moment of genuine tension, but it is also a moment where the film’s tone shifts from comedy to something darker. The film cannot hold that shift.
The film’s final stretch involves clues from Earl’s car leading Milo and Nicole to a country club, where they learn from a caddie that Earl owns a tattoo parlor in Queens. They start to make their way there. A call from Bobby warns them to get off the road and lie low. The nearest hotel turns out to be a dead end. The chase continues.
The Verdict: A $5,000 Payday
The Bounty Hunter is a film that is less than the sum of its parts. The cast is talented. The premise is clever. The execution is a disaster. The film’s biggest flaw is that it never commits to what it wants to be. It keeps pulling back from the action that would make it thrilling and the comedy that would make it funny. The result is a film that spends its runtime chasing a target it never quite reaches.
| Element | Strength | Weakness |
|---|---|---|
| Butler and Aniston | Strong leads | No chemistry |
| Sudeikis | Good supporting work | Underused |
| Irene and Sid | Effective villains | Cartoonish |
| Chase scenes | Some tension | Predictable |
| Tone | Shifts from comedy to dark | Inconsistent |
The film’s marketing promised a story about a job that isn’t personal. It is. The film’s tagline promises a little of that. It isn’t. The film is a chase that never finds its target, and a comedy that never finds its joke.
The Box Office: A Success That Wasn’t
The Bounty Hunter was a box office success, grossing $136.3 million against a production budget of $40–45 million. That success did not come from critical praise. The film received negative reviews from critics, and its reputation has not improved with time. The film’s defenders argue that it is a guilty pleasure. The film’s defenders are wrong.
A guilty pleasure is something you watch and enjoy for its excess. The Bounty Hunter is not that. It is a film that is too slow to be thrilling, too unfunny to be a comedy, and too unfocused to be anything at all. It is a film that wastes its cast and its premise on a chase that goes nowhere.
The Bottom Line: 2.2 Out of 10
The Bounty Hunter is a failure. It is a failure of tone, of pacing, of character, and of purpose. The film knows what it wants to be, and it fails to be it. The chase scenes are boring, the comedy is weak, and the romance is nonexistent. The film is a film that is less than the sum of its parts, and it is a film that ought to have been better.
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