Gerard Butler in the 'The Bounty Hunter' - hit or miss?
The premise of 鈥淭he Bounty Hunter,鈥� an action/romantic comedy from director Andy Tennant (鈥�Hitch鈥�), is a perfectly legitimate variation on Capra鈥檚 鈥�It Happened One Night.鈥�
More than a year after an acrimonious divorce, cop-turned-bounty-hunter Milo Boyd (Gerard Butler) gets the dream assignment 鈥� bringing in his ex-wife, investigative reporter Nicole Hurley (Jennifer Aniston), who has missed a court date.
Gosh, will they fight like cats and dogs? Will they have to team up to elude two different groups of bad guys? Will their forced intimacy make them realize that they really do belong together?
Well, duh. The sheer predictability isn鈥檛 the problem; I wouldn鈥檛 have the plot play out any other way. It鈥檚 everything else that鈥檚 the problem. At points, the film sinks below the level of competent: A stupid plot trick early on is so badly edited that it takes another minute to figure out what鈥檚 supposed to be going on.
The pacing 鈥� both overall and within scenes 鈥� is so slack that even the irresistible Aniston and some usually reliable character players can鈥檛 liven things up. Butler exceeds expectations simply by virtue of not yelling 鈥淭his is Sparta!鈥� every 20 seconds.
Grade: F (Rated PG-13 for sexual content, including suggestive comments, language, and some violence.)
Peter Rainer, the Monitor's film critic, is on vacation this week.
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