Featuring an assured star turn by Lamas, BOUNTY TRACKER tells a standard mercenary revenge tale in a brisk, no-nonsense manner; the film's vigorous pacing and memorable villainy disguise the threadbare nature of the material and elevate it above the level of standard revenge melodrama.
Paid to hunt felons for a living, Johnny Damone (Lorenzo Lamas) must put his skills to personal use. Because his brother Paul's partner has involved their accounting firm in mob money-laundering, crime king Sarazin (Eugene Robert Glazer) orders a hit on every employee, to prevent them from
testifying at his upcoming hearing. Paul (Paul Regina) and his pregnant wife are wiped out by Sarazin's mercenaries--Erik Gauss (Matthias Hues), Jewels (Cyndi Pass), and Max Talton (Brooks Gardner)--despite police protection, so Johnny relentlessly tracks down his brother's killers. While Gauss
anticipates the bounty tracker's every move, the police concentrate on keeping Sarazin's ex-partner, Jerry Greco (Anthony Peck), alive so he can testify.
Johnny tracks down Gauss' former comrade, Alberto Manuel (Judd Omen), who's unwilling to cooperate. Stuck in a wheelchair because of Gauss, he's become a barrio philosopher who tries to keep teens like Tony (Eddie Frias) out of trouble. Although Johnny knocks out dozens of Gauss' cronies at a
martial arts academy and also eludes Jewels' bullets, Greco is not so fortunate: the killers locate his safe house and slay him along with several cops. After Gauss fatally stabs Manuel because he's a loose end in Gauss' crime career, Johnny persuades Tony and his pals to form a rag-tag
counterforce. Tracking Gauss' soldiers of fortune to their rendezvous with Sarazin, who has been freed because of lack of evidence, Johnny and company await their opportunity in an auto junkyard. After receiving his payment in diamonds, Gauss and his associates coolly gun down Sarazin and his
bodyguards. Although Gauss then traps one of the boys in a car, the bounty tracker prevails by picking off the assassins while Tony frees his buddy. Johnny shoots Jewels and manages to hang up Gauss on some spikes conveniently sticking out of a nearby truck. He turns his reward money over to Tony,
who continues Manuel's humanitarian work.
Despite its busy script, BOUNTY TRACKER never gives way to confusion or loses its momentum in expository details. More concerned with visceral action than suspense, the film is a valid showcase for Lamas' athletic prowess, even if the scene in which he appears to defeat all the extras in the
stuntman's guild borders on the preposterous. Not so edifying is the movie's attempt to create a surrogate family for our hero with the ghetto teens. Clearly intended to add a human dimension to Johnny's revenge quest, the bonding seems a bit forced. An inarguable achievement, however, is the
film's creation of two of the creepiest killing machines ever unleashed in an action movie: Gauss, the soft-spoken merchant of death, and his almost android-like female accomplice, Jewels. With such alarming assassins on the hero's trail, the audience really works up concern for him as each new
lethal contingency arises, and by focusing on the antagonism between the bounty hunter and his brother's murderers, BOUNTY TRACKER single-mindedly drives its retaliation scenario full speed ahead. (Graphic violence, adult situations, profanity.) leave a comment
