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Two out of Five stars
Running time: 100 mins

Disappointing, frequently dull and painfully unfunny romcom that's let down by a badly written script, obnoxious characters and a total lack of chemistry between Butler and Aniston.

What's it all about?
Directed by Andy Tennant (Hitch), The Bounty Hunter stars Gerard Butler as ex-cop-turned-bounty-hunter Milo Boyd, who's overjoyed when he's assigned to track down his bail-jumping ex-wife Nicole (Jennifer Aniston) and escort her to jail. However, far from being a career criminal (as the trailer seems to promise), Nicole is actually an investigative reporter on the trail of a murder cover-up and it isn't long before the pair find themselves on the run from gun-toting bad guys and falling for each other all over again.

The Good
To be fair to Jennifer Aniston, she's the best thing about The Bounty Hunter, in the same way that Amy Adams was the only good thing about Leap Year. It also has a potentially interesting premise (think Midnight Run meets War of the Roses) but the fact that Nicole is only wanted for a traffic violation strips it of any edge it might have had, which is a shame, because it might have been fun to see Aniston play an out-and-out bitch for once.

The Bad
If Jennifer Aniston is the best thing about The Bounty Hunter then Gerard Butler is easily the worst – essentially reprising his boorish character from The Ugly Truth, he's utterly obnoxious (his smug laugh is particularly annoying) and a charisma-free zone from start to finish. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he has zero chemistry with Aniston and neither of them can bring any spark to either the love scenes or the scenes where they're fighting.

The film is also let down by poor pacing and an atrocious script that doesn't bother to tell you how Milo and Nicole met in the first place or how they split up or anything that might explain why he supposedly hates her so much at the beginning. On top of that, none of the jokes work and the film wastes a talented supporting cast that includes Christine Baranski (Nicole's mother), Jason Sudeikis (Nicole's obsessed co-worker) and the wonderful Cathy Moriarty, whose loan shark character inexplicably disappears halfway through.

Worth seeing?
The Bounty Hunter is badly written, poorly directed, frequently boring and totally lacking in either laughs or chemistry. Can Gerard Butler stop making romcoms now please?