By Robert Scucci
| Published 1 hour ago
There’s nothing I love more than a generic plot that lets you lean into and have fun with its characterization. I’m not even being facetious here. I think it’s a model that works for commercial filmmaking because, if we’re being real, we’re all just watching the same movies over and over again with different titles. There are expected genre conventions that allow filmmakers to bust out a quick storyboard, get some great talent involved, and let them chew the hell out of the scenery.
1989’s L.A. Bounty is just another “lone bounty hunter looking for revenge” flick, but it works because Sybil Danning is serious as a heart attack in the lead role, and then she has to face off with Wings Hauser, who seems to be having just a little too much fun acting like a murderous psychopath.
You know all the beats going into this one, but you’ll want to stick around because the exchanges that happen between those beats make the entire viewing experience worthwhile. And at the end of the day, aren’t we all just trying to be entertained?
Mayors, Mobsters, And Murder
L.A. Bounty kicks off with the kidnapping of Mike Rhodes (Robert Hanley), who’s running for mayor in the next election. A lone bounty hunter, Ruger (Sybil Danning), intervenes, allowing Mike’s wife, Kelly (Lenore Kasdorf), to escape traumatized but safe. We learn that Mike was kidnapped by psychotic drug kingpin Cavanaugh (Wings Hauser), who spends most of his time painting portraits of nude women and killing people on a whim when he’s not moving unthinkable amounts of drugs to his cohorts.
When Cavanaugh learns that Kelly is still a loose end, he sends his men to ambush her, but Ruger is already one step ahead of him, and she’s pissed. This isn’t Ruger’s first run-in with Cavanaugh, but she’s hoping it will be her last. Previously, Ruger worked as a narcotics officer trying to take down the kingpin, but she resigned from the force after he killed her partner in cold blood, giving her current protection job more personal stakes than Kelly would like to be involved with.
Meanwhile, Lieutenant Chandler (Henry Darrow) works closely with Mayor Burrows (J. Christopher Sullivan), who wants to know who’s behind the kidnapping. Being this close to the election, the only thing he cares about is saving face, and he doesn’t want the public, or any of his constituents for that matter, to think he had anything to do with his rival’s kidnapping.
Sybil Is Serviceable, Hauser Is Next Level
While L.A. Bounty didn’t boost Sybil Danning’s career like she thought it would, she’s doing everything she’s supposed to be doing here. Ruger is a woman of few words, but she knows how to hold her own in action scenes. She convincingly portrays a jaded bounty hunter with an axe to grind, while still bringing plenty of B-movie energy to the forefront. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but she was clearly hoping this flick would be her ticket to action-thriller franchise stardom, which is quite the reach if I’m being brutally honest. The film’s $2.2 million budget leaves it rough around the edges, and she performs well within those limitations, so credit where it’s due.
The real star of the show in L.A. Bounty is Wings Hauser as Cavanaugh. He’s so delightfully twisted that it borders on comical, but the contrast between his personality and Danning’s makes for some genuinely entertaining moments. Cavanaugh thinks he’s some brilliant artist, but we don’t see what he’s painting until well into the third act, which makes you want to rewind the whole thing and revisit every scene set in his lair. Early on, when he’s philosophizing and talking about his evil plans, you build up an image in your head of beautiful photorealistic portraiture or some insanely detailed abstract art. What you finally get to see recontextualizes everything that came before because he’s laughably terrible at art.
The final action sequences have their limitations, but there are a few great kills that make the juice worth the squeeze. One thing I admired, which I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, is how we need to bring back the warehouse showdown. Sometimes all you need to make a low-budget action movie really pop off is a few practical explosions, a floor littered with shell casings, and a badass bounty hunter rocking the Atomic Blonde haircut decades before Charlize Theron ever did.
As of this writing, you can stream L.A. Bounty for free on Tubi.
