The Bounty Hunter

The Bounty Hunter (1989)

He cleaned up as The Exterminator. Fought back as The Retaliator. Now he's setting a new price on vengeance.

An ex-cop turned bounty hunter shows up in a small town looking for a man who's jumped bail. However, the real reason he's there is to avenge his old friend, an Indian who lived in the area and was murdered by the local sheriff, who is trying to get the Indians to sell their land cheaply so an oil company can move in and take over the land, which they believe sits on top of large reserves of oil.

Date of release
1989-08-27
TMDB
3.5 / 10 (6)
Runtime
1h 30m
Genres
Crime, Action
Director
Robert Ginty

Casting

Interesting facts

The Bounty Hunter is a 1989 American neo-Western action film starring, co-written and directed by Robert Ginty, in his directorial debut. Bo Hopkins, Loeta Waterdown and Melvin Holt co-star. Ginty plays a bounty hunter who joins the struggle of Choctaw Indians against the cruel sheriff of their small town (Hopkins).

Production

After several films together, David Winters, founder of Los Angeles-based A.I.P. Productions, understood Robert Ginty's need to grow past action roles. The modest project would allow him to try his hand at directing, as he was not yet sure if he would enjoy it. According to Variety, it was intended as a pilot for a potential TV series.

Ginty said that the story was inspired by real-life events, and that he strove to strike an even-handed tone in his portrayal of the film's racial strife. Buck, the senior member of Sheriff Bennett's inner circle, was originally corrupt like the others, but he was made more ambivalent in rewrites.

Bo Hopkins did The Bounty Hunter to honor his longtime friendship with Ginty. According to the latter, Hopkins' participation was key to securing financing for the film. Other that the two leads, the cast was largely local and sourced from a Tulsa-based casting director, Pam Whorton. It featured a number of Native Americans, including Loeta Waterdown and Melvin Holt. Stage actress Waterdown was hired on the eve of filming.

Principal photography took place in Oklahoma between late April and mid May 1988. Much of the crew was sourced locally, with a few key exceptions like cinematographer Robert Baldwin, who Ginty brought back from the Exterminator movies he had starred in. The stunt coordinator was Los Angeles-based Bob Ivy, who worked in collaboration with the Movie Stunts company of Tulsa.

Although Ginty enjoyed his first directorial experience, he was dissatisfied with the picture's editing, as A.I.P. boss David Winters rarely exercised much control over post-production. As a result, he felt that some of its Western mood was lost.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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