There are few things as cool as a bounty hunter. Going purely on the basis of movies and television, it's the ideal gig when you lack the commitment to be a cop (even a loose cannon cop) and you don't want the ruthless immorality of the bloody stuff. Of course, cinema's bounty hunters run the gamut from Gerard Butler's mellow Milo in The Bounty Hunter to the ruthless killers of Sergio Leone, so the boundaries between "hitman" and "hunter" are often blurred.

But the difference between an assassin and a bounty hunter isn't financial (assassins are often guns for hire), but one of publicity. If you kill people for a living, you have to basically live off the grid. Bounty hunters have to surface, and provide proof that they've brought their quarry in, dead or alive ... or they don't get paid. They willingly wear their profession on their sleeve. That takes guts, and it's no wonder that they tend to stand out in any cast of characters.

So in honor of The Bounty Hunter, here are seven of my favorite hunters of humanity. Butler's Milo Boyd might want to rent all of these films and study them closely, especially in regards to fashion. No bounty hunter worth his or her grit would be caught dead in that short-sleeved plaid shirt. The whole point of being one is to live outside of society, so why would you choose to dress like your average Target ad?

What do you do with a woman who boldly declares that she's a whore? If you're Cameron Yates, you follow her around for years and discover that she has a fascinating, funny, troubling story to tell. And you end up with The Canal Street Madam, a documentary that had its world premiere at SXSW. The film navigates gracefully through shifting emotional currents, blurring the lines between issues and people to allow the outspoken, occasionally contradictory Jeanette Maier to speak her mind about life as an infamous -- or famous, she can't quite decide -- prostitute and business owner.

Maier became known as "The Canal Street Madam" after she was arrested by the FBI for running a house of prostitution in New Orleans. What set her story apart in the national consciousness was the revelation that Maier, her mother, and her daughter were all involved in the business. Three generations of prostitutes made for a great news story, and Maier was able to parlay that publicity into a made for TV movie starring Annabella Sciorra as herself and Ellen Burstyn as her mother. But Maier was convicted of a felony, and so comes to realize that her options have become more limited for the next stage of her life.

Not that she seems to have had many options before she became a prostitute. She was sexually abused at a young age by a close relative, eventually drifting into dancing in strip clubs and then following her mother into the prostitution business. Her first trick was easy money, she recalls: $200 plus a $200 tip for an hour's work; she felt good about it.