08-11-2018, 07:43 PM
Hudson Hawk (1991)
I knew a lot about this notorious boxoffice bomb (losing the studio about $50m) going in from various reviews and commentaries picking it apart. This is what happens when you give a (then) hot star (Bruce Willis) a blank cheque to make his passion project. A jumbled mixture of Hitchcock-style caper (there is a character called 'George Kaplan'), typical Willis action, wacky comedy, cartoonish silliness, extreme violence and bad language. The plot makes no sense, in fact nothing anybody says or does makes any sense. If you just agree to accept that before pressing play, you'll probably have a good time. Willis plays a super cat-burglar who times his jobs by singing pop songs for some reason. He gets mixed up in a criminal plot involving a Leonardo da Vinci' alchemy machine, CIA goons named after candy-bars, two psychotic billionaires and a secret-agent-nun sent by the Vatican.
It's got many laugh out loud jokes and some that are funny because of how misjudged they are. e.g. a fairly graphic throat slitting and somebody shouting "Shall I rape them?" are played for laughs (I did laugh but out of embaressment for the movie
). I loved the fun friendship between Willis and Danny Aiello but Andie MacDowell is a flatline as the love interest (even if she does do Dolphin noises while drugged by a Curare tipped dart). Sandra Bernhard and Richard E. Grant appear to be in a competition to be the most over acting actor that ever over acted. 'Hudson Hawk' might be a train wreck but it's my kind of wreck.
I knew a lot about this notorious boxoffice bomb (losing the studio about $50m) going in from various reviews and commentaries picking it apart. This is what happens when you give a (then) hot star (Bruce Willis) a blank cheque to make his passion project. A jumbled mixture of Hitchcock-style caper (there is a character called 'George Kaplan'), typical Willis action, wacky comedy, cartoonish silliness, extreme violence and bad language. The plot makes no sense, in fact nothing anybody says or does makes any sense. If you just agree to accept that before pressing play, you'll probably have a good time. Willis plays a super cat-burglar who times his jobs by singing pop songs for some reason. He gets mixed up in a criminal plot involving a Leonardo da Vinci' alchemy machine, CIA goons named after candy-bars, two psychotic billionaires and a secret-agent-nun sent by the Vatican.
It's got many laugh out loud jokes and some that are funny because of how misjudged they are. e.g. a fairly graphic throat slitting and somebody shouting "Shall I rape them?" are played for laughs (I did laugh but out of embaressment for the movie
). I loved the fun friendship between Willis and Danny Aiello but Andie MacDowell is a flatline as the love interest (even if she does do Dolphin noises while drugged by a Curare tipped dart). Sandra Bernhard and Richard E. Grant appear to be in a competition to be the most over acting actor that ever over acted. 'Hudson Hawk' might be a train wreck but it's my kind of wreck.![[+]](https://forums.fanedit.org/images/focus/collapse_collapsed.png)