HUDSON HAWK
Reviewed by David N. Butterworth
(c) 1991 David N. Butterworth/The Summer Pennsylvanian
Don't be fooled by trailers.
The marketers of HUDSON HAWK obviously have a lot more talent than the filmmakers.
Misguided and miscalculated on every conceivable level, HUDSON HAWK is the most lame-brained, stupefyingly awful movie to have come around in a long time. Director Michael Lehmann (HEATHERS) has taken a promising idea and turned it into a mind-boggling misfire, a sorry spectacle of a film that even the most die hard Bruce Willis fans will abhor.
The movie's wooden and empty-headed plot revolves around master cat burglar Eddie "Hudson Hawk," played by Willis. He's hired to steal three priceless da Vinci artifacts by a variety of odious villains -- the Mario brothers, George Kaplan and the Candy Bars, and a pair of kinky and colorful miscreants, Darwin and Minerva Mayflower (played to the hilt by Richard E. Grant and Sandra Bernhard).
The plan is to unlock the secrets of Leonardo's puzzle, three Rubik's Cube-like crystals which, when put together correctly, are said to provide instant wealth and gratification. Pity the same couldn't be said of the film.
The Hawk is aided and abetted by long time partner-in-crime and confidante Tommy Five-Tone (Danny Aiello of DO THE RIGHT THING). They get to perform a couple of gratuitously surreal musical numbers together, which shows you just how low this film will sink in order to get a laugh.
Andie MacDowell (SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE) plays Willis' love interest, Anna Baragli. Lovely, yes, but interesting? Not in this movie.
You know where the film's heading when it manages to poke fun at Asians, the handicapped and overweight people all within the first five minutes. By its long overdue conclusion, everyone else in between -- including the audience -- has been insulted.
The best thing in the film are the Mayflowers, who resemble characters in a John Waters movie. Bernhard has a field day in her role as Minerva, a garishly outfitted, rubber-faced dominatrix who gets off on psychologically ridiculing the mawkish Hawk. Her performance is hideously over the top, but that's what makes it all the more fun to watch.
And Grant's despotic Darwin delivers what few funny lines there are in the film. Waters, the director of such sleazoid epics as PINK FLAMINGOS and POLYESTER, has said that bad taste is what entertainment is all about. But in HUDSON HAWK, Lehmann abuses the privilege.
Apparently the film had more than its fair share of production problems, discernible from the opening credits. Willis -- who must take a large part of the blame for this embarrassment -- co-wrote the story with Executive Producer Robert Kraft. Kraft, in turn, shares screen credit with composer Michael Kamen (DIE HARD and the "Lethal Weapon" series). Kamen was supposedly still working on the score days before the film was released. And it shows.
The sound, too, is so bad you can't often hear what the characters are saying. And the film is poorly edited -- some snatches of footage are so short you're not quite sure what you are supposed to have seen. All this in a movie reputed to have cost upwards of $75 million!
But where HUDSON HAWK really fails is in its direction.
If it's supposed to be a slapstick farce, then how come nobody has anything funny to say or do? One wonders if dialogue like "If da Vinci were here today, he'd be eating sushi, naked, in the back of a Cadillac with both of us" is meant to raise a chuckle or two. And after the second or third pratfall, the film's heavy-handed and juvenile attempts at physical comedy grow increasingly tiresome.
If it's supposed to be a caper film, then how come the camera spends more time pandering to Willis' trademark muggings than it does detailing the planning and execution of the robberies themselves? Whatever happened to those dapper jewel thieves of the '30s and '40s, the Ronald Colmans and the David Nivens with all their wit, charm and sophistication? Smug is definitely one thing Cary Grant was not.
If you're in the mood for a sparkling heist movie, check out RIFIFI or the splendid TOPKAPI. Or if you're simply looking for a Bruce Willis vehicle, then you can do no better than DIE HARD or its sequel. But don't -- as the ads would have you -- "Catch the Hawk." For when you actually do nab the bird, this "Hawk" turns out to be a turkey.
| Directed by: Michael Lehmann David N. Butterworth - UNIVERSITY OF PA | | Rating: *1/2 Internet: butterworth@a1.mscf.upenn.edu |
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