grizzledgeezer "Hudson Hawk" is not so much a story about itself, but about other action-adventure films -- almost any one you can think of, but most significantly "North by Northwest" (with a bit of "It Takes a Thief" thrown in). * As its only purpose is to make self-aware references to other films, why should the viewer be interested? If the movie's creators don't take the material seriously -- why should we?"North by Northwest" is hardly a serious film. The climactic scene on Mount Rushmore is //intended// to be ridiculous, a parody of Hitchcock thrillers. ** It gets away with this silliness by doing a slow build in which the normalcy and predictability of everyday life are gradually stripped away. What ought to be absurd is accepted as realistic.You can't have a film that's ridiculous/absurd from the beginning -- unless it's an obvious farce ("Airplane!") or a Warners cartoon. "Hudson Hawk" is neither.There are moments of real humor, especially one involving a ketchup bottle. But these are too few and far between to even begin to save the film. (As Rossini said of Wagner... "Great moments, but terrible half-hours.")For what it's worth, Michael Lehmann's direction is superb -- perfectly paced and timed. It's hard to imagine this film being worse than it is -- but it could have been.* If this isn't obvious, note that James Coburn's character is named George Kaplan.** The working (tongue-in-cheek) title was "The Man in Lincoln's Nose". Roger Thornhill's matches bear the monogram ROT -- rot -- and Thornhill says the O "stands for nothing".

videorama-759-859391 I must admit this is not one of my favorites of Bruce's. Some bits of it work which, are the excitingly dangerous bits, with some "You gotta be kidding stuff", where the rest just bore, a bad concoction of the two. The movie is just stupid, what can I say, with not the best of scripts, and Bruce's acting isn't something to brag about. He plays a cat burglar, who's just got out of the can, and no sooner is he forced into stealing something from the Vatican, where some other baddies are after what he has. The music sequence of "Would You Like To Wish On A Star", sung by dangerous duo Willis and Aiello was admittedly and undoubtedly the best thing about this misfire of a movie, left in the hands of a trio of writers, one of them being Steven De Souza, where we would expect more from the guy. If into fantasy, and you want something different, this is a fifty fifty gamble, and Willis is offered some funny lines, the one involving ".... the hat convention, truly memorable. But really this movie will only be remembered for how bad it was. Winner for worst screenplay of 1991.

schf Hudson hawk is shanghaied by various powerful people the moment he gets out of prison into pulling a museum job but of course this is just the beginning of his troubles. One of those hilarious underrated classics that pop up every now and again.The world and his wife lined up to criticise this film . They were ,of course, all completely wrong. Its part smarmy heist caper, part musical, part buddy action movie it does not clearly fit into one genre so of course people hated it.The comedy works the stunts are good and the plot is strangely compelling. Id advise you disregard everyone's opinion (except mine of course) and see it your self

classicalsteve It isn't enough to come up with a good premise in terms of a storyline for a film script. The script has to realize its potential. Unfortunately the talents of Bruce Willis and Danny Aiello weren't enough to save this disjointed and largely un-entertaining excuse for a movie. What makes "Hudson Hawk" so frustrating is that the initial premise is actually a good one which had a lot of potential. While I understand the filmmakers probably wanted to make a movie which was a kind of comedy-caper, much like similar films of the 1960's, they made so many over-the-top efforts to "to be funny" that "Hawk" is nearly unwatchable in some scenes.Usually heist films and other similar fair where the baddies are essentially the main characters have a lot of comedy which can evolve out of the situations rather than being forced. "The Hot Rock" and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" are cases in point. I wish the screenwriters of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and/or "The Hot Rock" had been the ones to write this screenplay, or at least they should have offered advice to the writers of "Hawk". In "Butch and Sundance", some of the funniest moments are when the two outlaws are arguing with each other about what to do next and how to handle the situation. Never do we feel like the jokes are forced upon the characters. That's what I felt with "Hawk", that the humor was forced by the hand of the screenwriters rather than coming from the characters' mouths naturally.The premise is simple but could have been affective if handled better. A cat burglar is let out of prison and takes on some "jobs" to lift some of Leonardo da Vinci's artwork. Unfortunately, as a kind of introduction, we meet da Vinci and his world and it looks like a bad scene from Mel Brooks' "History of the World Part 5". From here on out we know the film is not only going to be over-the-top in the humour department, but it's never going to take itself seriously enough for there to be any real meat to the story. It's over the top humour for humour's sake, and I felt I really didn't care about anything the characters were doing, unlike "Butch and Sundance" where at every moment I was riveted by their actions.Even films like the first Superman film with Christopher Reeve had a lot of humour but ultimately took itself seriously enough that we cared what happened to its characters. Hawk could have been a really good film if the writing had been better, the characters less cardboard, and the humour less cheap. Instead, the filmmakers made a film not unlike many of the Warner Bros. cartoons of the 1940's and 50's. The action is over the top, the acting is over the top, and the lines were just downright ridiculous at times. And yet at other times, the plot seemed a bit more serious, as if the film didn't quite know what it wanted to be. Great potential wasted.