| Hudson Hawk | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Michael Lehmann |
| Screenplay by | |
| Story by | |
| Produced by | Joel Silver |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Dante Spinotti |
| Edited by | |
| Music by |
|
Production company | |
| Distributed by | Tri-Star Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 100 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $65 million[1] |
| Box office | $97 million |
Hudson Hawk is a 1991 Americanaction comedy film directed byMichael Lehmann.[2]Bruce Willis stars in the title role and also co-wrote the story.Danny Aiello,Andie MacDowell,James Coburn,David Caruso,Lorraine Toussaint,Frank Stallone,Sandra Bernhard, andRichard E. Grant are also featured.[3]
Thelive action film employscartoon-styleslapstick heavily, includingsound effects, which enhances the film's signaturesurreal humor. The plot combines material based onconspiracy theories,secret societies, and historic mysteries, as well as outlandish "clockpunk" technologyà la Coburn'sOur Man Flint films of the 1960s.[4]
A recurring plot device in the film has Hudson and his partner Tommy "Five-Tone" (Aiello) singing songs concurrently but separately, to time and synchronize their exploits. Willis-Aiello duets ofBing Crosby's "Swinging on a Star" andPaul Anka's "Side by Side" are featured on the film's soundtrack.
The film was a huge critical and commercial failure in the United States, only grossing $17 million and earning threeRazzies (includingWorst Picture), but it was better received internationally and grossed $80 million for a worldwide total of $97 million.
Eddie Hawkins—"Hudson Hawk" (from the bracing winds off theHudson)—is a master cat burglar andsafe-cracker with a penchant for using low-tech solutions against high-tech security systems. He is also known for conducting his robberies with precise, synchronized timing (later revealed to be a robust catalog of memorized music that he and his partner(s) sing along with during jobs).
Upon Hawk's release from prison, and on his first day of parole, he and his former partner, Tommy "Five-Tone" Messina, seek out a good cup of cappuccino. However, before Hawk can drink it, he isblackmailed by various entities. These include his parole officer, the minor Mario BrothersMafia family, and theCIA, who push him into doing a few art heists.
Hawk refuses each, despite mounting pressure and coercion, stating that his only natural desires are to remain out of prison and enjoy a good cup of cappuccino—though he isrepeatedly interrupted before doing so. Hawk eventually relents and proceeds tocase the art pieces.
Unbeknownst to Hawk, his blackmailers are all manipulated by the American corporation Mayflower Industries, run by husband and wife Darwin and Minerva Mayflower and their butler Alfred. Headquartered in thePalazzo della Civiltà Italiana, inside of theEsposizione Universale Roma, the company seeks to take over the world by building La Macchina dell'Oro, a machine invented byLeonardo da Vinci thatconverts lead into gold.
An assembly ofcrystals needed for the machine to function is hidden in various of Leonardo's artworks: themaquette of theSforza, theDa Vinci Codex, and a scale model of da Vinci's helicopter. Sister Anna Baragli is an operative for a secretVaticancounter-espionage agency, working with the CIA to assist in Hawk's mission in Rome, intending to foil the robbery atSt. Peter's.
After blowing up an auctioneer to cover up the theft of the Sforza, the Mario Bros. take Hawk away in an ambulance. He sticks syringes into Antony Mario's face and falls out of the ambulance on a gurney on theBrooklyn Bridge, and they try to run him down with the ambulance as they speed along the highway.
The brothers get killed when their ambulance crashes. Immediately afterward, Hawk meetsCIA head George Kaplan and four codenamed agents (Snickers, Kit Kat, Almond Joy, and Butterfinger) who take him to the Mayflowers.
Hawk successfully steals the Da Vinci Codex from another museum, but later refuses to steal the helicopter design. Tommy Five-Tone fakes his death so they can escape. They are discovered and attacked by the CIA agents; Kaplan reveals that he and his agents stole the piece but, unlike them, had no problem killing the guards. Hawk and Tommy escape when Snickers and Almond Joy are killed and pursue the remaining agents. Kit Kat and Butterfinger take Anna to the castle where the Macchina dell'Oro is reconstructed.
The showdown is in the castle between the remaining CIA agents, the Mayflowers, and the team of Hudson, Five-Tone, and Baragli. Minerva kills Kit Kat and Butterfinger, although Kit Kat frees Baragli before dying. Tommy fights Darwin and Alfred inside a speeding limousine, and Hudson fights George Kaplan on the castle's roof. Kaplan topples from the castle, landing on the limousine. Alfred plants a bomb in it, escaping with Darwin; Tommy gets trapped inside while Kaplan is hanging onto the hood. The bomb detonates as the limousine speeds over a cliff.
Darwin and Minerva force Hawk to assemble the crystal powering the machine, but he intentionally leaves out one small piece. When the machine is activated, it malfunctions and explodes, killing the Mayflowers. Hawk battles Alfred, using his blades to decapitate him.
Hawk and Baragli escape the castle using the da Vinci flying machine. Baragli implies she will be leaving her order to watch out for Hawk. They discover Tommy waiting for them at a café, having miraculously escaped death through a combination of airbags and a sprinkler system in the limo. With the world saved and da Vinci's secrets protected, Hawk finally enjoys a cappuccino.
BeforeBruce Willis became a full-time actor, he had worked at a bar inNew York City. One of the regulars at the bar was Robert Kraft, who worked with Willis on putting a song together called "The Hudson Hawk", with Kraft being inspired by a strong wind that blew from the Hudson River acrossManhattan in the fall. Eventually, when Willis became a star, he went back to the idea of doing a super sleuth film, one that Kraft thought could be "the anti-James Bond" with potential for follow-up films.Joel Silver, who had produced Willis with the first twoDie Hard films, jumped on producing this film.Maruschka Detmers was originally cast opposite Willis but suffered a back injury and had to depart the role, which sawAndie MacDowell cast.[5]Michael Lehmann, director of films such asHeathers (which had been written byDaniel Waters, who was hired to co-write the screenplay), envisionedRichard E. Grant andSandra Bernhard as playing manic villains, with one basis of inspiration being Silver. The budget reportedly went from $42 million to around $70 million to go with constant on-set rewriting and rumors of turbulence with producer-star Willis; it was shot inItaly,England, andHungary. Grant, who spent four months on the production, wrote about his experiences making the films in his bookWith Nails, listing various stories such as Willis continuously watching his close-ups on the video replay monitors on takes to go with co-starDanny Aiello wanting re-writes for the climax.[6][7]
 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Hudson Hawk" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(January 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
The soundtrack album was released byVarèse Sarabande in 1991. There are eleven tracks in all. The film's score (represented by tracks 4-9) was composed and conducted byMichael Kamen withRobert Kraft. Kraft also wrote "Hawk Swing" and co-wrote the film's theme with star Bruce Willis.
The song "The Power" bySnap! is featured, although not included on the soundtrack, when Hudson Hawk is taken for the first time to the headquarters of the Mayflowers. Minerva Mayflower, played bySandra Bernhard, is sitting on a desk and sings the song while it plays on her headphones.
On thereview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, 30% of 46 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "Hudson Hawk's kitchen-sink approach to its blend of action and slapstick results in a surreal, baffling misfire."[8]Metacritic, which uses aweighted average, assigned the film a score of 17 out of 100, based on 15 critics, indicating "overwhelming dislike".[9] Audiences polled byCinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.[10]
In theChicago Tribune, Terry Clifford observed that: "The end result is being thrown up onselected screens this weekend, and the suspicion that this was a pooch turns out to be undeniably correct. Boring and banal, overwrought and undercooked,Hudson Hawk is beyond bad."[11]
AsKenneth Turan wrote in theLos Angeles Times:
The saddest thing aboutHudson Hawk is that director Lehmann and co-screenwriter Waters were previously responsible for the clever, audaciousHeathers, a film that represented all that is most promising about American film, while this one represents all that is most moribund and retrograde. Perhaps they both earned enough money here so that they won't be tempted to indulge themselves in similar big-budget fiascoes. Here's hoping.[12]
Roger Ebert andGene Siskel gave the film a "two thumbs down" review on theirAt the Movies TV show. Ebert described the film as a complete disaster: "every line starts from zero and gets nowhere". Siskel's review was marginally more positive, saying that Willis had a few funny moments and furthermore that the film might have been salvaged if Willis and Aiello had been the only zany characters against a cast ofstraight men, as opposed to a cast full ofoveracting, where everyone tried too hard to make each line funny.[13]
Variety called the film "a relentlessly annoying clay duck that crash-lands in a sea of wretched excess and silliness. Those willing to check their brains at the door may find sparse amusement."[14]Peter Travers ofRolling Stone said of the film: "A movie this unspeakably awful can make an audience a little crazy. You want to throw things, yell at the actors, beg them to stop."[15] James Brundage ofAMC filmcritic said the film was "so implausible and so over the top that it lets inconsistency roll off like water on a duck's back."[16]Janet Maslin in theNew York Times called the film "a colossally sour and ill-conceived misfire" and denounced the film for "smirky, mean-spirited cynicism."[17] Writing inThe Washington Post, Joe Brown said: "To say this megamillion Bruce Willis vehicle doesn't fly is understatement in the extreme...Hudson Hawk offers a klutzy, charmless hero, and wallows dully in limp slapstick and lowest common denominator crudeness."[18] Chris Hicks wrote in theSalt Lake CityDeseret News: "What is most amazing is the pervasive silliness that has the cast acting like fools without ever getting a laugh from the audience. It's hard to imagine a major, big-budget movie that could come along this year and be worse thanHudson Hawk, a solid contender for the longest 95 minutes in movie history.[19]Owen Gleiberman inEntertainment Weekly called the film "a fiasco sealed with a smirk."[20]
Jo Berry fromEmpire gave it three out of five stars, noting that it "reached UK screens with the added burden of having been slaughtered by US critics who likened it to famous big budget turkeys likeRaise The Titanic andIshtar. True, the film has its flaws, but the positives do outweigh the negatives, with Bruce Willis at his wisecracking best in the title role."[21]
Jane Lamacraft reassessed the film as one of the "Forgotten Pleasures of the Multiplex" forSight & Sound's June 2011 magazine.[citation needed]
The film performed poorly in the United States, partly because the film was intended as an absurd comedy, yet was marketed as an action film one year after the success ofDie Hard 2.[22] It grossed only $17 million in the United States and Canada.[23] Internationally, it performed much better, grossing $80 million[24] for a worldwide total of $97 million. By the end of its theatrical run, the film had lost the studio an estimated $90 million.[25]
The film performed well on home video[26] and by 1995 started to pay out to profit participants, including Bruce Willis.[27]
It received three1991 Golden Raspberry Awards forDirector (Lehmann),Screenplay andPicture with additional nominations forActor (Willis),Supporting Actor (Grant), andSupporting Actress (Bernhard). It was also nominated for Worst Picture at the 1991Stinkers Bad Movie Awards, losing toNothing but Trouble.[28]
The film was released onVHS andLaserDisc in late 1991. Upon its home video release, the tagline "Catch the Excitement, Catch the Adventure, Catch the Hawk" was changed to "Catch the Adventure, Catch The Laughter, Catch the Hawk".[29] Despite the film's failure at the US box office, the film was successful on home video.[26]
It was released twice onDVD, first in 1999 and again in 2007 with new extras. In 2013, Mill Creek Entertainment releasedHudson Hawk onBlu-ray for the first time; it was included in a set withHollywood Homicide. All extras were dropped for the latter release.[30]
A video game based on the film was released in 1991 under the titleHudson Hawk for various home computers and game consoles.Sony Imagesoft released versions of the game for theNES andGame Boy, whileOcean Software released it for theCommodore 64,Amiga,ZX Spectrum,Amstrad CPC, andAtari ST. It is a side-scrolling game where the player, as the Hawk, must steal theSforza and theCodex from the auction house and the Vatican, respectively. Then, Castle Da Vinci has to be infiltrated in order to steal the mirrored crystal needed to power the gold machine. On his journey, Hawk must face many oddball adversaries, including dachshunds that try to throw him off the roof of the auction house, janitors, photographers, killer nuns and a tennis player (presumably Darwin Mayflower).
| Awards | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Razzie Award for Worst Picture 12th Golden Raspberry Awards | Succeeded by |