Only Fan seems to be having some self-aware fun as the multitalented Bobo. Ng is the hacker, so her character development amounts to wearing odd clothes and typing faster than is humanly possible as she pulls up multiple screens showing classified documents. Tang is unconvincing as a badass bounty hunter and spends most of her time literally modeling fashionable crime-fighting ensembles. Lee, so good in Gangnam Blues, struggles to make the one-note, reticent Lee San feel more substantial than a surly high schooler, and Chung’s endless mugging and “comedic” inappropriateness is exhausting. The entire insipid affair is further hampered by limp, uncommitted performances. Heroes with tragic and/or more benevolent backstories than they let on? Unlikely allies in former adversaries? Hilarious (totally not) gay panic moment? Check, check and check. Escape from fiery death by jumping out a window into a hotel pool many floors below? Check.
Potential love interests getting “stuck” together at kissing distance? Check. While on the road to the final showdown with Tommy (Jeremy Jones Xu, Kung Fu Angels), the megalomaniacal Big Bad Possessed of an Evil Laugh - who is bombing the hotels his father founded because he was left out of the will (maybe?) - Bounty Hunters checks off every box this kind of entertainment could possibly have. Along the way, the duo meets bounty hunter team leader Cat (Tang Yan, Assembly), her hacker partner Swan (relative newcomer Karena Ng) and Bobo (martial arts star Louis Fan, Ip Man), the multitasking butler/stylist/hitter. Then it’s off to Seoul, Bangkok and finally resort-y Jeju Island off Korea’s south coast (strangely Shanghai does not make an appearance). The next stop is Hong Kong, where we meet former Interpol (again with the Interpol) partners and current bodyguards Yo (Wallace Chung, Drug War, Monster Hunt) and Lee San (Lee Min-ho, Gangnam Blues) as they try and connect with their next client, a persecuted journalist. That said, it’s ideal airplane fare.īounty Hunters starts in Tokyo with a bombing at a luxury hotel, one of a chain that is evidently being targeted by terrorists.
Select overseas markets might take a gamble on the shiny glamor pic, if only to have an option during a slow week.
The film could garner limited attention during the summer, when this type of fare plays best, in the three markets that will guarantee its release, but beyond that its prospects in Asia-Pacific are minimal at best. Sadly, the filmmakers forgot to engineer a script.īest known for throwaway but entertaining romps like Runaway Cop and My Girlfriend Is an Agent, Shinterra and writers Edmond Wong (Donnie Yen’s Ip Man trilogy) and Kim Kyu-won are clearly trying to recreate the goofy globetrotting fun of John Woo’s Once a Thief and Choi Dong-hoon’s The Thieves, but neither Bounty Hunters’ comedy, performances or story are amusing or inventive enough to achieve those goals. No conventional stone is left unturned and no cliché in the book is left by the wayside in South Korean hack action-comedy director Shinterra’s (sometimes credited as Shin Terra, Terra Shin or Shin Tae-ra) latest, Bounty Hunters, a Hong Kong-Korea-China co-production scientifically engineered for maximum regional appeal.
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