This review contains some SPOILERS.
I was walking through my local video rental place, looking for an action movie that started with the letter B. The title I was after was not there, but my eyes accidentally passed by `The Bounty Hunter,' with a picture of Robert Ginty on the box cover. I like Ginty as an action hero and I reminisced about enjoying Ginty in the `Exterminator' movies. I quickly scooped up this new title, one that I had never noticed before and heard nothing about, and rented it. After watching it, I must say that it is better than I expected, especially after finding out Ginty was also the director, but it is also nothing that will take your breath away.
Ginty plays Duke Evans, a former cop that disliked the job and became a bounty hunter for better pay and better hours. He makes his way to a Southwestern town in America to nab a bail jumper, but he has ulterior motives for going there. His old Vietnam buddy, a Native American, who lived in the town was murdered by the sheriff, played by Bo Hopkins. It seems as if Hopkins has been trying to force the large Native American community to sell their sacred land so that some oil barons can come in and drill out the oil and develop the land. Ginty wants to gather some hard evidence to put Hopkins and his tyrannical rule over the town away, and he turns to his dead buddy's sister for help. She first educates him about how important it is for the Native American community to stand their ground for the sake of their culture before helping Ginty blast his way into action against Hopkins. Are you thinking what I was? Are you thinking that this plot sounds very similar to Val Kilmer's `Thunderheart,' which was made a few years later? Well, sort of. It has those similarities, but it doesn't explore them as much as `Thunderheart' did. The main scene that it does is kind of funny, when Ginty sits in at an elementary school class. It's funny because the teacher is rambling about a Native American story, but all the children are fidgeting and are hardly paying her any attention at all.
Still, `The Bounty Hunter' was not a bad experience. Ginty's direction was pretty good except for the action scenes, which seem a bit low on excitement, perhaps because the director was running around with a shotgun being filmed instead of sitting in the director's chair. But that is all right this time because most of the film's focus is on the manipulations between Ginty and Hopkins, like how Ginty keeps following Hopkins's deputy around to gather dirt, or in Hopkins's efforts to get Ginty out of town. Ginty's character could have been explored a little more, and he doesn't look very good with the bushy mustache, but he is still good. The movie belongs to Hopkins, though, who takes a normally cliched character that he has played many times before (really, how often does Hopkins NOT play a sheriff?) and really rolls with it. He really puts everything he's got into his dialogue this time, and I really liked him.
In short, this isn't a movie that will knock your socks off, but if you like either of the stars featured, you should check it out. Ginty seems to have disappeared from the limelight as of late, and we could use him back on the screen. Even if he ends up making so-so movies, at least they will be more worthwhile than most of the junk you find on the screen these days. Zantara's score: 6 out of 10.
I was walking through my local video rental place, looking for an action movie that started with the letter B. The title I was after was not there, but my eyes accidentally passed by `The Bounty Hunter,' with a picture of Robert Ginty on the box cover. I like Ginty as an action hero and I reminisced about enjoying Ginty in the `Exterminator' movies. I quickly scooped up this new title, one that I had never noticed before and heard nothing about, and rented it. After watching it, I must say that it is better than I expected, especially after finding out Ginty was also the director, but it is also nothing that will take your breath away.
Ginty plays Duke Evans, a former cop that disliked the job and became a bounty hunter for better pay and better hours. He makes his way to a Southwestern town in America to nab a bail jumper, but he has ulterior motives for going there. His old Vietnam buddy, a Native American, who lived in the town was murdered by the sheriff, played by Bo Hopkins. It seems as if Hopkins has been trying to force the large Native American community to sell their sacred land so that some oil barons can come in and drill out the oil and develop the land. Ginty wants to gather some hard evidence to put Hopkins and his tyrannical rule over the town away, and he turns to his dead buddy's sister for help. She first educates him about how important it is for the Native American community to stand their ground for the sake of their culture before helping Ginty blast his way into action against Hopkins. Are you thinking what I was? Are you thinking that this plot sounds very similar to Val Kilmer's `Thunderheart,' which was made a few years later? Well, sort of. It has those similarities, but it doesn't explore them as much as `Thunderheart' did. The main scene that it does is kind of funny, when Ginty sits in at an elementary school class. It's funny because the teacher is rambling about a Native American story, but all the children are fidgeting and are hardly paying her any attention at all.
Still, `The Bounty Hunter' was not a bad experience. Ginty's direction was pretty good except for the action scenes, which seem a bit low on excitement, perhaps because the director was running around with a shotgun being filmed instead of sitting in the director's chair. But that is all right this time because most of the film's focus is on the manipulations between Ginty and Hopkins, like how Ginty keeps following Hopkins's deputy around to gather dirt, or in Hopkins's efforts to get Ginty out of town. Ginty's character could have been explored a little more, and he doesn't look very good with the bushy mustache, but he is still good. The movie belongs to Hopkins, though, who takes a normally cliched character that he has played many times before (really, how often does Hopkins NOT play a sheriff?) and really rolls with it. He really puts everything he's got into his dialogue this time, and I really liked him.
In short, this isn't a movie that will knock your socks off, but if you like either of the stars featured, you should check it out. Ginty seems to have disappeared from the limelight as of late, and we could use him back on the screen. Even if he ends up making so-so movies, at least they will be more worthwhile than most of the junk you find on the screen these days. Zantara's score: 6 out of 10.