The Bounty Hunter

Gerard Butler plays Milo Boyd, an ex-cop turned unwashed, unshaven bounty hunter who gambles and drinks too much. He’s also ex-husband to intrepid girl reporter Nicole Hurley (Jennifer Aniston).

At the start of the film, she’s investigating a mysterious suicide for a story in the New York Daily News but is held up by a pesky court date for a traffic accident. When her source contacts her needing to meet immediately, she skips out on her trial, and a bench warrant is issued for her arrest.

Naturally, Milo’s boss is the bondsman who posted her initial bail, and Milo is the bounty hunter sent to collect her. The prospect fills him with uninhibited glee, an unexplained emotion that Butler plays strangely. He giggles and bounces, tracks mud through her apartment and eats Doritos in her bed. Milo must eventually track Nicole to Atlantic City, where her mother, Kitty (Christine Baranski), is a headlining lounge singer.

While he’s looking for her, all sorts of seedy types are searching for both of them. There’s a crooked cop (Peter Green) out to kill Nicole before she can discover any more about the “suicide”; a bookie (Cathy Moriarty) who’s sent a couple of her goons to break Milo’s kneecaps for his outstanding debt; and a hapless girly-man in a lavender polo shirt (Jason Sudeikis) who’s in love with Nicole after a drunken office-party makeout session.