Bounty (2009) Reviews

• Dog the Bounty Hunter Meets 'Body Snatchers'

  jpmellow2019-05-15

  Another cool little flick as I slowly make my way through the films of director Kevin Kangas. This is his Body Snatchers; a familiar premise viewed through the unique lens of a Dog the Bounty Hunter-esque show. Not a bad elevator pitch. It's not a full-fledged narrative in the traditional sense. It watches like an intimate side-story unfolding while a much larger-scale threat looms in the background, perfectly suited for a smaller-scale budget like this one. It's very entertaining, and as the story progresses, it skillfully captures the bleak mood of an increasingly grim situation. For me, there were definitely echoes of John Carpenter's early stuff; that forbidding isolation captured in Assault on Precinct 13, The Fog and Escape from New York. From the films I've seen so far, the cast of this one feels like the director's strongest, with some welcome familiar faces popping in from Kangas' other movies. A couple of weak links in the chain actingwise, but none to the point of distraction. If I have a gripe with this one, it's that some of the exposition is doled out with a heavy hand. Ernie Litwak, our lead scientist along for the ride, is there to tell us everything that's developing in a super despondent demeanor; when you catch onto the fact that he's never wrong, it's not hard to tell where the movie's headed. Nevertheless, it's a fun ride. The subtle music and sound is applied to great effect. The first-person point of view of the in-movie documentary's camera operators does a fine job of capturing that reality show-gone-askew feeling needed to pull this thing off. It wasn't until the very end that I got that nagging "Put that camera down and run, dude" awareness. I'd take that as a good sign. Looking forward to my next late-night Kangas Kahn Films watch.