Year: 1996
Runtime: 98 min
Director: George Erschbamer
Starring: Michael Dudikoff, Lisa Howard, Benjamin Ratner, Erin Fitzgerald
Sometimes it’s fun to play Russian Roulette with your movie selection. And the best actor to play this deadly little game with? My pick would be Michael Dudikoff.
Are you going to get something watchable? Are you going to regret the next hour-and-a-half of your life? Who knows! It’s a mystery!
All kidding aside, Dudikoff’s flicks did tend to vary wildly in terms of quality, so whether you were going to plop down for a cheesy but enjoyable action flick or some grade-Z snorefest was always the big question. Going into Bounty Hunters, I felt a trickle of optimism. And I know it was optimism because I went to the bathroom before sitting down.
The movie is directed by George Erschbamer, the man who helmed the Snake Eater trilogy. This will mean nothing to most people, make a select handful shiver in terror, and make an even smaller fraction raise an interested eyebrow. Those three movies were weird, chaotic, and tonally inconsistent to such a degree that if the name wasn’t the same you would be hard-pressed to believe they were all meant to exist in the same cinematic universe.
I liked ‘em.
Bounty Hunters is a lot more grounded and a fair bit less sleazy than those films, but it’s still a goofy ride.
Michael Dudikoff plays bounty hunter Jersey Bellini, a man who spends way too much time booby trapping his suburban home. This becomes a recurring skit as he has a water cooler full of pepper spray for anyone daring to open a window, an exploding television set, and even a lamp rigged to cook anyone foolish enough to want a little extra light to read by. I mean, sure, a man needs his hobbies, but this is a tad ridiculous.
He is joined by Lisa Howard, playing another bounty hunter by the name of B.B. who shares a romantic link to Dudikoff, though this has led to a rift by the time the movie opens. The movie doesn’t state that it’s due to him obsessively turning his house into a Saw test chamber, but go ahead and assume that’s the case.
The movie has a lot of bickering between these two as they compete to bring in a weaselly little car thief. Some of it is funny, some of it is tedious, but the Odd Couple routine is practically a tradition in an action/comedy, the only problem here is that whatever issues they have with each other, they are largely ignored after the middle part of the film.
Fortunately, we get plenty of other plot bites to chew on as the movie progresses. It turns out the car thief jacked the wrong ride; he steals a mobster’s fancy set of wheels, unaware that there is a hooker tied up in the trunk. When Jersey and B.B. rescue the girl, they learn that she was to be killed because she witnessed this mob boss kill a dude. Naturally, they intend to protect her.
Well, one of them does. Jersey comes around when they kidnap his only friend, a token black kid who lives next door.
Actually, let’s unpack the villain’s thought process for just a second.
So this mob guy kills someone and then to cover it up, kidnaps the hooker who witnessed the killing. Okay so far. But then he decides that he is willing to kidnap a young child, right in front of said child’s parents, just to convince the two bounty hunters to turn over the hooker. Uh, seems like that strategy is creating more witnesses to your crimes, not less, but what do I know? I am not a mafia kingpin.
The movie is meant to be a low-budget action film, but is immediately hamstrung by the fact that neither of its two leads are very good action stars. Sure Dudikoff has been in dozens of action movies, but his value as a direct-to-video butt kicker is pretty marginal and Lisa Howard does her best, but her martial arts scenes are awkward and clumsy. And even the shootouts tend toward disappointment, with characters just popping in and out of cover like they are in a shooting gallery.
Most of the fight scenes are so poorly choreographed that the hapless mooks actually have to pause and wait for the kick or punch that will send them sprawling into the furniture. This is not a Cynthia Rothrock stunt-fest. Heck, it’s not even a Don “The Dragon” Wilson whack-em-up. It’s almost slap-stick comedy and it might have been really good if the movie had leaned into that, but it takes its action rather seriously and as a result feels like it really missed a golden opportunity.
But it’s not all terrible. Some of the action scenes are perfectly acceptable and the movie does have a sense of humor outside of the flying fists and speeding lead. A lot of the humor is of the aforementioned bickering couple variety, of which the best scene is easily when Jersey snags B.B.’s bounty and she climbs onto his speeding van to force him off the road. It’s a minor stunt scene but well worth a chuckle as it helps to establish that neither one of our heroes is especially even-tempered.
Dudikoff also has a few enjoyable scenes throughout. He plays his role like an amiable schmuck who would rather talk his way out of trouble but only ends up making most situations worse. Almost like a shotgun-toting member of the Three Stooges.
It’s a well-paced film, moving from plot point to action sequence without a lot of unnecessary fluff in-between, though one incredibly ill-advised scene involving a rap club sticks out as jarring. The entire scene is meant to be a bit of a lark, as Dudikoff is the only white person in the club, but it comes off as more than a little bit racist as it portrays the black patrons as wildly violent and is just a sour note in an otherwise enjoyable movie.
There is a chance for redemption before the end, with the lure of a big showdown between our heroes and the villain, who has managed to capture the pair. This climax should have been an easy sell, but it stumbles before it can cross the finish line by abandoning the main villain in favor of a bunch of faceless goons. We only get the plot wrapped up after the big shootout when it feels like someone whispered to the director that the bad guy was about to get away, causing him to slap his forehead and scribble an addendum to the script. So instead of a satisfying hero/villain showdown, we get the cinematic equivalent to a footnote where it turns out the bad guy was helpfully waiting half-a-mile down the road so that he could, I dunno, watch Jersey and B.B. escape?
When the credits roll and I look back at Bounty Hunters, I have to ask myself if it was any good. I certainly enjoyed myself, but then I am a big Michael Dudikoff fan, and there are precious few of us around. Is it a good movie? No. Is it fun? A little. Should you watch it? Depends on how big a Dudikoff fan you are. It’s definitely not a terrible movie by his standards and on a lazy night it might even provide a chuckle or two.
