Bounty Hunter

Did someone say The Booty Hunter ? In an early scene in The Bounty Hunter , the desperately unfunny action-romance starring Jennifer Aniston's glutes and Gerard Butler's triceps, the camera trails Aniston's backside as in an extended doggy greeting. Foreplay and foul play make strange bedfellows in this yawn about flirty ex-spouses ciphering the twin puzzles of their failed marriage and an unsolved murder. (Or was it suicide?) While following a hot lead, Nicole (Aniston)

Philadelphia authorities have to do a better job when issuing Get-Out-of-Jail cards, but needed reforms in the bail system are more complex than merely putting Dog the Bounty Hunter on the case. Given the controversy surrounding the recent freeing of a man jailed on a gun charge, the court system's handling of bail can be anything but fail-safe. The suspect in a 2011 murder and an associate were arrested Tuesday for allegedly killing a witness to the earlier murder last week. Indeed, an Inquirer investigation in 2009 revealed widespread problems with court defendants who failed to show for trial, with the number of fugitives once climbing to 47,000.

Bounty hunting may not rank high on anyone's list of approved work, but until the end of the last century, bounties were paid as a reward, or premium granted by law, as an inducement to the performance of a service regarded as beneficial to the public. Bounties were paid for all kinds of commercial and agricultural services, but by far the best known use of the bounty was in matters related to war and the apprehension of criminals. Since colonial days, grants of land and money were made in return for military service, and large sums were awarded for enemy scalps.

GERARD BUTLER can be a charming rogue. Jennifer Aniston can handle light comedy, and spent a decade on television getting laughs out of a perpetually fraught relationship. Somebody in Hollywood should know how to leverage these ingredients into a romantic comedy about a charming rogue and his fraught relationship with a sexy ex. I guess that somebody isn't director Andy Tennant, who in "Bounty Hunter" delivers a flabby, leaden romantic comedy featuring Butler as a bounty hunter hired to bring in his bail-jumping wife (Aniston)

The $1 million bail forfeited when serial rapist Andrew Luster fled the country will go to law-enforcement agencies and his three victims, not to the bounty hunter who captured the Max Factor heir in Mexico, a judge ruled yesterday. Ventura County Superior Court Judge Edward Brodie said professional bounty hunter Duane "Dog" Chapman was entitled to none of the money because he broke Mexican law while apprehending Luster on June 18 in Puerto Vallarta. "I don't condone vigilante justice that violates the law," said Brodie, prompting Chapman to storm out of the courtroom trailed by a cadre of TV cameras.

The sentence was light but the message was stern: Bounty hunters who break the law will be punished. "The point here is deterrence. . . . There are other ways of doing one's job," state Superior Court Judge John Tomasello said yesterday before sentencing Kenneth Wickliff, a bounty hunter convicted last month of trying to force his way into the home of a woman whose son had jumped bail. Wickliff is the first bounty hunter in the state to be convicted of a crime in connection with his job, according to the Gloucester County Prosecutor's Office.

A judge has acquitted a Northeast Philadelphia man of trying to shoot a bounty hunter who allegedly broke into the man's apartment to arrest him on a New Jersey fugitive warrant in 1988. Defense attorney Louis T. Savino Jr. argued that allowing bounty hunters to push their way into the homes of fugitives would mean "a return to the wagon train days of the 19th Century. " After a prosecutor cited an 1872 U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing bounty hunters to take fugitives into custody, Savino said that under modern laws, only law enforcement authorities can arrest fugitives.

One moment, Ahsaki Gordon was working at her day job as an assistant house manager at a group home in Northeast Philadelphia; the next, she was on a slow road to a nightmare. The 23-year-old Germantown woman spent most of that day two years ago handcuffed in the back seat of a bounty hunter's car, en route to Virginia Beach, Va. She was being taken in for a crime in which she was the victim, not the perpetrator. Her wallet had been stolen 10 months earlier, she said. Gordon wound up spending four days in jail before her mother was able to straighten out the mess.

Dressed in a snazzy gold blouse and typing away at her computer, Tina Michaelides looks more like a book publisher than a gun-slinging, stone-hearted bounty hunter. But Michaelides, all 5-foot-5 of her, is effective in part because of her delicate coiffure and painted nails. Stereotypes, she said, are one of the keys to her success at tracking and trapping fugitives. "People see movies and think that if they skip bail, they'll be able to tell the person who's coming to get them by the trail of exploding helicopters, bloody noses and cigar butts," said Michaelides, 31. "I just show up and knock on the door and they answer, thinking, 'Oh, it's just a woman.

Citing judicial error, a state appeals court yesterday ordered a new trial for a bounty hunter convicted of trying to break into an East Greenwich woman's home in pursuit of her bail-jumper son. In June 2003, Kenneth Wickliff became the first bounty hunter in New Jersey to be convicted of a crime in connection with his job, according to the Gloucester County Prosecutor's Office. The case pitted the rights of homeowners against the authority of bounty hunters. Wickliff's conviction was seen as a blow to those in the business of chasing fugitives.

Even though Philadelphia's bail system is broken, it's anything but clear that inviting bounty hunters back to town will solve the city's fugitive problem. That's why top court officials need to be held to their pledge to closely monitor the moves being made to open the door wider to commercial bail-bond writers, who are boasting better-than-average court-appearance rates for their clients. Faced with no-show-for-trial rates that mean as many as one in three criminal defendants skip their court dates, the city's courts, at the direction of the state Supreme Court, earlier this month lowered the bonding requirements for private bail firms.

It was good to see National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell uphold his tough penalty against the New Orleans Saints for paying bounties to members of that team who viciously tried to hurt opposing players. By upholding the fines and suspensions he handed down last month, Goodell sends a strong message that the NFL is truly serious about cracking down on unnecessary violence in the sport. Not only was Goodell's credibility at stake in adhering to his original decision, but also public confidence in a league that too frequently has been slow to make player safety a higher priority.

Philadelphia authorities have to do a better job when issuing Get-Out-of-Jail cards, but needed reforms in the bail system are more complex than merely putting Dog the Bounty Hunter on the case. Given the controversy surrounding the recent freeing of a man jailed on a gun charge, the court system's handling of bail can be anything but fail-safe. The suspect in a 2011 murder and an associate were arrested Tuesday for allegedly killing a witness to the earlier murder last week. Indeed, an Inquirer investigation in 2009 revealed widespread problems with court defendants who failed to show for trial, with the number of fugitives once climbing to 47,000.

SOMEONE MAY have to change his name to Nicolas Cage d. The "National Treasure" star, himself a national treasure, was arrested Saturday in New Orleans' French Quarter after he got drunk Friday night and argued in the street with his wife over whether a house they were in front of was theirs. Granted, when you don't know your own house, that's pretty drunk, but once in Tattle's building a tipsy tenant couldn't get his apartment key to work and started banging on the door.

1. Date Night . (PG-13) 2. The Last Song . (PG) 3. Death at a Funeral 1/2 (R) 4. Furry Vengeance 1/2 (PG) 5. Diary of a Wimpy Kid 1/2 (PG-13) 6. Clash of the Titans . 1/2 (PG-13) 7. Repo Men 1/2 (R) 8. Kick-Ass . 1/2 (R) 9. Cop Out . (R) 10. Bounty Hunter 1/2 (PG-13) Top DVD titles at U.S. Blockbuster stores for week ended Aug. 22. ( New this week)