Christmas Bounty 2013 (Movie Review)


Dir: Gil Junger
Starring: Francia Raisa, Mike Mizanin
Dur: 1 hr 30 mins
Genre: Action-Comedy
Rating: 2.5/5
PG: A few kisses and sexual innuendoes.

Christmas is a time of fun, frolic and gifts. Well, it’s also a time for thieves to make quick money. This is no run-of-the-mill cops and robbers story. It’s a story about bounty hunters. I don’t think they exist but they sure make interesting characters. If I may say at the outset, the story is a bit weird. The story, however, although a bit forced has a finger of comedy.

The Bells are a bounty hunting family. They are a trio of father, mother and daughter. They are assisted by two men who have become adopted family. Tory (Francia Raisa), has left home quite awhile ago in order to pursue a dream she though would bring her happiness, and allow her to get away from her past. Her boyfriend’s marriage proposal brings her back home to the life she abandoned but never forgot. Soon after returning back, she is allured back to bounty hunting (a passion as she slowly discovers) but tries her best to hide it from James (Will Greenberg), her fiance. James’ innocence is taken advantage of and he is kidnapped by a criminal who is looking to get even with Tory for busting him before. The action is quite artificial and the dialogues are mediocre. The comedy keeps the film afloat but it doesn’t have much buoyancy. Slowly, Tory realizes that her ‘old’ life wasn’t as bad as she thought and that she preferred being her wild, free self. The ending is a bit ambiguous and ambivalent. The message isn’t clear. A plus point is that there is very little, if I recall correctly, foul language used, but that along with a few other positives isn’t much to look out for. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Great Grand Masti 2 (2016) (Movie Review)

Image
Dir: Indra Kumar Starring: Vivek Oberoi, Riteish Deshmukh, Aftab Shivdasani, Urvashi Rautela Dur: 2 hrs 10 mins Genre: Comedy Rating: 1/10 Comment: The jokes, gestures and costumes are sexually suggestive. An absolute waste of time. “What an opening line”, you might think. But to say otherwise would be an absolute lie. This film is in fact, a great grand waste of time. It’s horrible whichever way you look at it. The story is weak and thrives on cheap thrills and sorry jokes. The actresses are no doubt eye-catching but the rest is all a blur. The comedy is in fact tragedy and the film attempts to play on the basest desires of man. It’s unbelievable that actors like Riteish and Vivek would do such a film. I am not a big fan of bollywood but I still feel bad when I see bollywood making films like these. All of a sudden, I see that sex is being propagated through Indian cinema. The views of sex are changing and filmmakers and actors are not hesitating to take on unconvent
Read more

St. Joseph: A Father after the Father's Heart (Book Review)

Image
  St. Joseph: A Father after the Father’s Heart , Hyderabad: Don Bosco Publishing House, 2021, Rs. 150, pp. 240. The book is a compilation of articles from various authors writing about qualities of St. Joseph. They have used the litany of St. Joseph as an index and have put together articles on each of the invocations. All the contributors are Salesians from different parts of India but there a couple of contributors from abroad as well. The book lends itself to be a souvenir of the Year of St. Joseph that Pope Francis declared. Let me start out by commenting on the quality of production. The paper is of good quality and so is the design and layout. It is neat and has an attractive cover. Coming to the content, it gets rather repetitive but that is understandable considering that there is so little Biblical foundation for an exposition of St. Joseph. The articles often reference Pope Francis’ letter Patris Corde and extensively utilize Pope St. John Paul II’s apostolic exhortatio
Read more

A Day with Don Bosco

                              Don Bosco was declared the Patron of Youth by Pope John Paul II in 1989. He received his mission: to be Father to the young, in a dream at the tender age of nine. He nurtured this call throughout his life and never wasted an opportunity to gather boys and direct them to God. He did not do this as a spiritual director, (at least no at first!) but rather as a friend, a companion and a seminarian. As a young boy, he would attract youngsters with his magic tricks, tightrope skills, games etc and then get them to recite the rosary with him or recount to them the Sunday sermon (which he remembered thanks to his prodigious memory). Already then, he had ingeniously found a way to combine religion and entertainment. His entertainment was necer for entertainment sake but rather a façade or an advertisment for religious instruction. Even as a young priest, boys would long for more than just a wekkly encounter with him. They loved him and found in him a friend w
Read more