As the story open, it turns out that Drifter has a more complicated past than previously assumed and as a result, he now has a bounty out on his head. Along with his trusted gun caddy (Barak Hardley), he decides to set off on a treacherous journey across the bombed-out remains of a post-apocalyptic world on a suicide mission to reach the Council of Nine and plead his case. Along the way, he is pursued by Mary, naturally, along with a corporate-owned hit squad known as Yellow Ties (all looking like refugees from the Serious Moonlight tour) and the possibly cannibalistic Gypsies, who seem to have a particular interest in learning what he knows about Mary. (Plot point.) Eventually, Drifter's past catches up with him in the form of former flame Catherine (Kristanna Loken). Heads really do roll, and ledgers are covered with more than red ink.

Although directed by relative unknown Henry Saine and based upon an obscure graphic novel, some trash-film fanatics may be forgiven for thinking that "Bounty Killer" is the work of the infamous Uwe Boll, often regarded as the worst filmmaker of our time and possibly of the history of the cinema entire. Like many of Boll's demented offerings (especially "Postal" and "Assault on Wall Street"), the film mixes together chintzy CGI effects, gallons of ersatz gore, dialogue that is almost literally unspeakable, incoherent editing and a political sensibility that could politely be described as confused. And like Boll's films, it even offers up brief and inexplicable appearances by familiar faces. Rapper Eve is a Gypsy warrior. Beverly D'Angelo plays a frontier madam. Gary Busey turns up for a couple of scenes in such a random manner that he appears to have drifted in from another movie, no doubt to the immense relief of the other movie.

The film wants to work both as a post-apocalyptic saga in the grand tradition of the "Mad Max" films and as a tongue-in-cheek goof on such things, and never quite succeeds as either. As a spoof, it doesn't work because it is more concerned with winking at viewers than of giving them funny something to wink about. As satire, it fails because it brings up its reasonably provocative ideas early on, then nearly forgets about them until the last ten minutes or so. In either case, the attempts to mix humor with extreme gore fail miserably. There is, I suppose, a way to laugh at the sight of someone with a chain embedded in their skull, but this film never quite finds it. As a straightforward genre piece, it also misses the mark because it runs on a little too long for its own good, the leads are not very interesting and, with the exception of two fairly impressive sequences (a desert chase and the opening stanza of the final set-piece), the action scenes are equally forgettable.

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