Starring Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler. Rated PG. Opens Friday, March 19

Is there one laugh in the soul-maiming action-comedy The Bounty Hunter, you ask? It truly warms the cockles of the heart to say that there is indeed a laugh to be had watching the lifeblood-draining, retina-stabbing, gnaw-off-your-own-hand film. Here goes: Jennifer Aniston’s tanned, toned, blond, miniskirted character walks into a tattoo parlour. The pierced and tatted chick at the counter takes one look at her and says, “Pilates World is across the street.”

It’s tricky thinking coherently about The Bounty Hunter given the massive head wound director Andy Tennant and screenwriter Sarah Thorp’s film inflicts, and given there’s nothing actually coherent about it. Hmm, a slug of Everclear should help. Right. Nicole (Aniston), an NYC reporter tracking a suspicious suicide, misses her court appearance for assaulting a cop. Bounty hunter Milo (Gerard Butler), gambling-debt plagued, eagerly agrees to nab Nicole. The Mensa-level twist? Nicole and Milo are ex-husband and wife, he hates her, she hates him, and the film needs an idiotic reason to be.

Milo chases Nicole. Nicole runs in her tight skirt and platform shoes; Milo locks Nicole in his car trunk. Nicole escapes in her tight skirt and platform shoes; Milo catches her. They bicker; Milo handcuffs Nicole to things. People try to kill them; they bicker. They drive to Atlantic City; they gamble at the Taj Mahal. People try to kill them; they drive a golf cart into water so that Aniston can get soaked. The soundtrack cruelly plays the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive”; they bicker. Nicole handcuffs Milo to things; crimes are inexplicably solved. They fall in love again; the viewer wishes they wouldn’t.

The two stars have zero chemistry and Butler is no comedian, but those three seconds aside, nothing’s funny anyway. Like one lucky character, the viewer hopes to be stuck in the neck with a needle full of horse tranquilizers.