Director Report Card: Michael Lehmann (1991)

3. Hudson Hawk

“Hudson Hawk,” your reputation proceeds you. If you’re a movie nerd of a certain age, the name “Hudson Hawk” is practically short-hand for a movie so horrendously misguided that its only plausible fate was to become a massive box office bomb. How did a misfire like this come to be? The idea was conceived by Bruce Willis and his friend, music producer Robert Kraft. Bruce wanted to do a Bond style super-spy movie with the sense of humor of his “Moonlighting” character. After the success of “Die Hards” 1 and 2, Bruce convinced mega-producer Joel Silver to turn this in-joke into an actual motion picture. Eighties action scribe Steven E. de Souza turned Willis’ pitch into a fairly straight-forward heist film. Bruce wanted it to be crazier so Silver hired “Heathers” screenwriter Daniel Waters, who had just wrote “The Adventures of Ford Fairlaine” for the producer, to make the movie wackier. Waters seemed like a natural addition, since Michael Lehmann was already signed on to direct. (As Silver was supposedly a big fan of “Heathers.)

But “Hudson Hawk” was always Bruce’s movie. Rumors persist that he took over filming, rewriting the script daily, and constantly changing his mind about what tone the project should have. The budget ballooned and shooting went way over-schedule. By the time this “Hawk” nested in theaters, the film had already garnered the reputation of a fiasco. Critics barred their fangs, audiences stayed away, and it’s only by the grace-of-god that Willis’ career survived. In the decades since the movie became a synonym for excess and failure, some have tried to reclaim “Hudson Hawk” as a wrongfully maligned gem. Where do I stand on this particular debate? Am I pro- or anti-“Hawk?” As with everything concerning this frequently baffling film, the answer is not as clear cut as that.

Eddie Hawkins has earned a reputation as the Hudson Hawk, the greatest cat-burglar and safe-cracker the world has ever known. Recently paroled from prison, he wants to change all that and begin a normal life. Forces conspire to get him back to his old ways. His old partner, Tommy, convinces him to pull off a daring robbery of an auction house, with a Leonardo de Vinci relic as the prize. This soon entwines Eddie in a conspiracy between the C.I.A., the Vatican, and a pair of evil millionaires known as the Mayflowers. They are all seeking control of de Vinci’s thought-lost designs for an alchemy machine, which can turn lead to gold via a series of reflective crystals. Running around Rome and pursued by various forces, Eddie seeks to save the world, get the girl, and drink a cappuccino.

Part of why “Hudson Hawk” probably flopped so spectacularly is because it was sold as a typical Bruce Willis movie. The trailers focused on the punching, shooting, car crashes, explosions, stunts, and wise-cracks. Aside from an oddball fairy tale style prologue with the “Rocky and Bullwinkle” narrator, the movie more-or-less feels like a typical Bruce Willis movie in its first half-hour. Yes, the dialogue is a little punchier and the characters are a bit zanier. Hawk has a fixation on cappuccino and trades barbed dialogue with his buddy, Tommy. The two time their heist by singing songs at the same time, as Hawk seems to obsessively know the complete lyrics and length of every entry in the American Standards songbook. Yet all of this is well within Bruce's typical smart-ass action hero wheelhouse. The initial heist scene is breezy and entertaining. If you know nothing about the movie up to this point besides its reputation, you might wonder why it was so despised in 1991.

This is before an auctioneer explodes suddenly and in a totally cartoonish manner. That scene is quickly followed by a ridiculous sequence where Bruce is dragged behind an ambulance on a gurney, cracking jokes the entire time as he improbably swerves his way through traffic. From that point on, “Hudson Hawk” only gets sillier. By the last act, you have James Coburn doing exaggerated karate kicks while Willis contorts his body to avoid the strikes, wacky sound effects playing on the soundtrack. The situations and one-liners just get more ridiculous, until you have Bruce delivering one of the most hilariously clunky postmortem quips in action movie history. If you are unprepared for “Hudson Hawk's” abrupt shift into a live action cartoon, its wild tonal shifts can be utterly blindsiding, its increasingly ludicrous direction baffling. But if you know what you're getting into, it's definitely kind of fun.

The movie's progressively zanier atmosphere does reel itself in slightly from time-to-time. Mostly when it's focusing on the romantic subplot. Andie MacDowell appears as Anna, an agent of the Vatican's anti-espionage sector that has been sent to seduce Hawk and prevent him from stealing da Vinci's codex. Of course, she does too well a job of that and the pair fall in love. McDowell and Willis actually have a likable chemistry together. The scene in her apartment, where they start to get close and she comments on his tattoos and scars, has an easy-going and likable energy to it. These moments are totally at odds with the rest of the movie's over-the-top goofiness but, taken as respites from the slapstick, they entertain well enough.

The romantic-comedy scenes do not represent "Hudson Hawk's" only unexpected departure from its tone of "Looney Tunes" absurdity. This is, after all, a Joel Silver action movie. That means there's a shit ton of explosions and gratuitous violence. The last act features Willis goofing around with a rocket launcher and there's multiple car crashes throughout. However, the movie makes the weird decision to play a lot of its violence as not cartoony slapstick, but semi-realistic. A throat is slashed early on, blood gushing out. The main villains are graphically killed by exploding shrapnel. It comes off as more than a little mean-spirited. Another Willis flick that year, "The Last Boy Scout," was similarly graphic. So maybe this was just the inevitable climax of eighties action excess. Yet considering "Meet the Applegates" was also weirdly mean-spirited at times, I'm wondering if it's not a Michael Lehmann thing. 

Overall though, I found that “Hudson Hawk’s” atmosphere of tonally inconsistent ridiculousness mostly worked for me. When focused on its goofy characters bouncing off each other within increasingly off-beat scenarios, it’s entertaining enough. Things only truly become a problem when it asks us to actually care about the people and events happening around them. The plot, to prevent world domination, has ostensibly important consequences that are mostly treated seriously. Late in the film, a supporting character seems to die, an event which the story tries to attach some seriousness too. It turns out he’s fine, in probably the most bullshitty plot twist in the film, but that sole moment of gravity sticks out like a sore thumb. You can’t have 99% of your movie be a parody and then have 1% be totally sincere. That’s just not going to work. 

Then again, it’s not like making sense is much of a priority here. To read that Bruce was rewriting the film’s plot all through filming is not surprising, as “Hudson Hawk’s” storyline is often convoluted. The general gist of the story — to prevent a da Vinci invented magical relic from falling into the wrong hands — is simple enough and maintained throughout. Yet the film’s need to pile on more conspiracies frequently gets confusing. First, Hawk is being blackmailed by the mob into stealing again. Then the C.I.A. is pulling the strings. After that, the evil Mayflower corporation gets involved. Their plan — to make themselves more powerful by sabotaging the world gold supply by flooding the market with alchemy-created gold — also seems unnecessarily convoluted. The movie then feels the need to throw in a plot from the Vatican as well. It’s all a little too much and it’s unsurprising that the exact details get a little lost with so much going on.

As much of a mess as “Hudson Hawk” undoubtedly is, the film is still an entertaining watch throughout. Daniel Waters’ script makes sure that not a minute passes without something wacky or unexpected happening. The C.I.A. agents pursuing Hawk are all named after candy bars for vaguely explained reasons. The one named Butterfinger, played by a fittingly gronk-ish Andrew Bryniarski, is a total simpleton that is nearly indestructible. Another one, named Kit Kat, is a mime for no reason at all that often wears outlandish outfits. A particularly bizarre scene involves the agents shooting people with paralyzing needles, that causes them to babble incoherently. The mob bosses are named the Mario brothers, one of several references to Nintendo. (A console a game adaption of "Hudson Hawk" appeared on.) There's a testicle-fixated dog, that meets a ghoulish fate. A little girl's stuffed elephant is a plot point in one sequence. The Vatican agents communicate via glowing statues of Christ. And every scene is filled with usually funny one-liners, many of which display the mastery for memorable dialogue Waters showed in "Heathers." "Hudson Hawk" uses every opportunity it can to grow more surreal. As nuts as the movie is, this is actually toned down from the initial cut which also featured a subplot about Hawk seeking revenge for his murdered pet monkey.

I think a big reason why so many critics had their knives out for "Hudson Hawk" is because it was perceived as a hideous vanity project for Bruce Willis. And, ya know, that's not totally unfair. It's obvious that Willis and Kraft dreamed up a whole elaborate mythology around the Hudson Hawk character, which this movie only gives us a peek at. Whole scenes are built around Willis singing, around the same time he was pursuing a rather misguided musical side career. And, of course, Eddie Hawkins is depicted as preternaturally cool, always ready with a funny quip, fighting off tough guys, and getting into incredible adventures. He gets the girl and does things like assemble a collection of magical crystals with ease or outrun a fireball in da Vinci's flying machine. The entire advertising campaign was built around Bruce posing in a fedora. While "Hudson Hawk" unquestionably is an ode to Willis' ego, the title character is as much Daffy Duck as he is Bugs Bunny. He is clowned on as often as he clowns on others. The movie probably would be stronger overall if Hawkins was always the butt of the joke. But at least Bruce knew not to write himself totally as a wish fulfillment figure. 

While Willis is obviously the star of the show, a game supporting cast is assembled here. Danny Aiello has a good rapport with Willis, giving their scenes a frequently breezy energy. James Coburn's cocksure smile and smart-ass demeanor makes him a likable villain. Lorraine Toussaint is the sole intimidating member of the candy bar club, as Almond Joy. The movie's surreal atmosphere is increased by the presence of human memes like Frank Stallone and David Caruso, though there's no way the filmmakers knew that at the time. Camping it up above all the movie's other camp elements are Richard E. Grant and Sandra Bernhard as the kinky, preening, utterly villainous Mayflowers. Grant and Bernhard absolutely tear the rafters off with grotesquely over-the-top performances, cackling and screeching during every second of screen time they have. While I can easily see people being off-put by such theatrically performances, Grant and Bernhard are having such a gleeful time. It's hard not to share in their utterly unhinged joy.

The fallout of "Hudson Hawk" was immediate. Many suspect Willis took the movie's savaging personally. He would never attempt writing a movie again and he rarely strayed from his action hero persona in the years afterwards. Though Lehmann and Waters would continue to get work, they never quite recovered from having a bomb as infamous as "Hudson Hawk" on their resumes. The movie flopping was a sign that the kind of campy action cinema excess Silver had popularized in the eighties needed to be recalibrated for the nineties. Yet, despite its notoriety, "Hudson Hawk" is too defiantly unique to be hated. I think it's definitely more of a fiasco than a secret success. I totally understand why many people despise the movie, then and now. But I get why it gathered a cult following eventually too. As all over-the-place as "Hudson Hawk" may be, there also aren't any other would-be blockbusters like it. (And, for what it's worth, the movie performed better overseas than domestically.) [Grade: B-]