Bounty Killer Is Entertaining in a Madcap Way

Bounty Killer feels like the adaptation of a videogame that doesn't exist. Inspired by the likes of Mad Max (movie) and Fallout (game), it tells of a desert dystopia in which soldiers of fortune are paid handsomely to knock off the corporate goons responsible for the world's sad state, with...

By Michael Nordine

September 5, 2013

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Bounty Killer feels like the adaptation of a videogame that doesn't exist. Inspired by the likes of Mad Max (movie) and Fallout (game), it tells of a desert dystopia in which soldiers of fortune are paid handsomely to knock off the corporate goons responsible for the world's sad state, with expectably gruesome results. Unlike many of its ilk, however, Henry Saine's B movie is more enjoyable for its eccentricities and affectations — the paper called Wasteland News, a condo development with the tagline "Stop surviving, start living," and a shadowy group called the Council of Nine are all memorable details — than for the lopped-off heads and fountains of blood that typify its action sequences. The characters carrying out these deeds are cardboard cutouts, the plot contrivances they bring about both silly and inconsequential, but the world they collectively form nevertheless feels fleshed out (if also derivative). None of this is good per se, but that doesn't prevent it from being entertaining in a madcap sort of way — watch for a scene in which a gun caddy, tied to a stake and fearing he's about to be cannibalized, yells in fear that "they're gonna love me — I'm so marbled!"

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Michael Nordine is a regular film contributor at the Village Voice LA Weekly, Denver Westword, Phoenix New Times, Miami New Times, Houston Press and Dallas Observer.

Contact: Michael Nordine

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