On February 28th, MPI Video will be releasing Patrick McBrearty’s action flick, Bounty Hunters, a film which also happens to be the feature film debut of the sexy WWE icon Trish Stratus.
Formerly known as Bail Enforcers, Bounty Hunters is about a trio of cash strapped bounty hunters, led by Jules (Stratus) who are eventually tipped off about an informant hiding in a massage parlor who’s got a $100,000 bounty on his head. What seems like a simple catch and release turns extremely messy when the informant’s mob boss, Hal Lambrino (Joe Rafla), offers the team $1,000,000 for the man.
Jules and her bounty hunting cohorts, Chase (Boomer Phillips) and Ridley (Frank J. Zupancic), decide to take the offer but while at the exchange decide to back out because Jules decided to develop a conscience. Now, with bounties on their head, the hunters also become the hunted as Hal sends his assassins to take out both the team and the informant.
As a child of the 90s it was practically guaranteed that you were following some form of wrestling, either WCW or WWF (now known as WWE). While you watched it for big names like Stone Cold, Undertaker and Goldberg, you also watched it because it was the only time you could see very hot woman battling it out in lingerie without your parents noticing. Trish Stratus was one such wrestler and so that’s why I thought watching her in an action movie would be a decent idea despite my better judgment. Boy was I wrong.
Even though I knew this would be a bad movie because it’s a B rated action flick with Trish Stratus as the lead, I had some sort of expectations. The movie consists of terrible acting, a god awful script, a couple of bad action sequences, and a complete disregard for continuity when it comes to battle wounds. For example, there is a female Asian assassin who just so happens to be a great fighter. At one point she gets stabbed in the foot yet, when a few hours pass by, she has no problem walking or kicking people with it. Now if a knife went through my foot and I kicked someone, I’m pretty sure pain would be shooting up through my entire body and I’d continue to curse my mouth off. Additionally, since the movie is rated R you would assume that when people are stabbed or just getting the shit kicked out of them that someone would get a bloody nose or something. Not the case in Bounty Hunters. People only bleed when bullets go through them; everyone else is considered a superhuman. I can’t believe I’m saying this but the WWF was more realistic than this crap.
When it comes to the fighting in general, Trish Stratus is no Gina Carrano but she can hold her own at some points. My issue is that I never felt intimidated by her, especially in the beginning when she was pulling out wrestling moves that she’d never be able to get pull off in a real fight. Also, I know she’s tough but when she gets rocked by a guy that 
weighs at least 150 pounds more than her there is no way she’s going to be able to get up. It made me temporarily hate the director and screenwriter.
If I had to say one good thing about the movie it was the inclusion of a girl on girl fight in an ambulance. One was dressed as a school girl, another as a nurse and they just beat the living shit out of each other. It was pretty impressive since the ambulance was moving and there wasn’t much room to move around and fight, so I have to tip my hat to both Trish and Andrea James Lui on that one.
Bounty Hunters comes with a couple of special features on the disc. There’s an interview with Trish Stratus where she goes into detail regarding her first film, training for the action, combining her wrestling background with the Krav Maga she learned for the film and what it was like to fight with Andrea James Lui. All of this was against a terrible green screen background that put footage of her fights to compliment the interview. The disc also comes with a trailer for the film and an ‘epic fight: behind the scene’ featurette which is really just a three and a half minute look at the second major fight between Trish and Andrea.
The only people I can honestly recommend this movie to are current die hard WWE fans. The entire feature feels like a bad WWE production but with the added bonus of something pretty to look at, though Stratus’s shoulders are a lot manlier/broader than I remember. If you’re not part of that niche group then I wouldn’t waste 80 minutes of your life on this sad attempt at an action film because even with low expectation the movie still manages to disappoint you on multiple levels.
Movie Rating: A sad attempt at a B-rated action film (3/10)
DVD Rating: 3.5/10
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