I am aware that there are certainties in the world of cinema that we do not want to believe: that Quentin Tarantino has only one film left, that Pixar no longer counts his films as masterpieces... or that Walter Hill left the era of 'The Warriors' behind. ' and '48 hour limit' a long time ago. And as proof, his latest work, a pitiful, poorly directed and poorly edited portrait that produces more sadness and nostalgia for extra-cinematic reasons than for what we can see on the screen.
One from the West
In these times when we do not stop wondering if an artificial intelligence could write a coherent script, comes 'The Bounty Hunter', a film that seems, as is, created from start to finish by a program that does not understand anything about feelings or human attitudes. All the clichés of any Western that you can think of are here, but there is no intention behind it or a story to tell: the footage passes slowly without one feeling that the film has any purpose beyond its mere existence.
And it won't be because it isn't full of familiar faces, surely eager to work with Walter Hill: Willem Dafoe, Christoph Waltz and Rachel Brosnahan form a trident that should be infallible but that here, subject to a script with nothing to hold on to, is They limit themselves to being the kings of the show doing what they can and trusting that the low budget is not noticeable in the final cut. But it shows. And how.
Sadly, in the end it is neither entertaining nor ingenious, nor does it go beyond a stereotyped plot, characters that are only sketched and dialogues that run the risk of falling into the shame of others. Some American critics defended it, arguing that it is a proud and self-aware B movie. Personally... I'm not so clear.
For a handful of dollars (literally)
Cinema artisans belong to another era. One in which they had enough budget to be able to carry out their ideas. In 'The Bounty Hunter' it seems that all the money went into hiring the performers and there was nothing left for the rest of the sections of the film: the set looks like plastic, the script needs a few revisions to deviate - at least a little- of the most boring cliché, the very slow editing abuses the fades to black after each scene and the direction cannot do anything when the wind continually blows against it.
There are some moments where you sense that, scratching, the film could have been better, especially in some dialogues that, from time to time, know how to be sufficiently sharp and in some camera movements where you can sense the mastery of whoever is behind it. However, no matter how much there are those who want to put on a mask to camouflage the artifice of "retro" and the commonplaces of "old cinema", it is difficult to deceive oneself to that point.
But maybe that's precisely what Hill was trying to do, a tribute to that simple cowboys and Indians movie, that television series that your father was hooked on every summer afternoon in which a man has a mission, finds a team, and accomplishes it. and that's it. Time has passed, the language of cinema is different and, despite everything, Hill seems determined to tell, once again, the story of characters who always make the right decisions in a not too wild West recorded with digital cameras whose texture moves away from the depth of John Ford's cinema and is a little more similar to your cousin Conchita's baptism. In the end, the visual aspect only adds layers to the absolute flatness we are faced with.
The last outlaw
But, at the same time, you can see that Willem Dafoe and Christoph Waltz are having a great time, Walter Hill cashed his check after making this commissioned film and no one has damaged his career for this small obstacle that tries to emulate an era . I can't recommend that you watch it under any circumstances beyond completism, but I'm not angry about its existence either. It is very minor, almost a class project, and it would certainly need a more accurate post-production, but we have been worse.
Do you want a good western from the last decade? There are a good handful of better options than this: 'The Power of the Dog', 'Cry Macho', 'The Hateful Eight', 'Bone Tomahawk', 'Comanchería' or 'The Sisters Brothers' are good places from which to put your focus. gender in modern perspective. But 'The Bounty Hunter' is a stale lemonade that cannot even quench the driest thirst, without invalidating its intention as a tribute.
