Hudson Hawk
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| Hudson Hawk | |
|---|---|
 Hudson Hawk promotional movie poster |
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| Directed by | Michael Lehmann |
| Produced by | Joel Silver |
| Written by | Bruce Willis & Robert Kraft (story) Steven E. de Souza & Daniel Waters (screenplay) |
| Starring | Bruce Willis Danny Aiello Andie MacDowell James Coburn |
| Music by | Michael Kamen & Robert Kraft |
| Cinematography | Dante Spinotti |
| Editing by | Chris Lebenzon Michael Tronick |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures TriStar Pictures |
| Release date(s) | May 24, 1991 (USA) |
| Running time | 100 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $65,000,000(estimated) |
| IMDb profile | |
Hudson Hawk is a 1991 film, directed by Michael Lehmann. 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, Richard E. Grant, and Sandra Bernhard are also featured.
The live action film makes heavy use of cartoon-style slapstick, including sound effects, which enhances the movie's signature surreal humour. The plot combines material based on conspiracy theories, secret societies, and historic mysteries, as well as outlandish technology à la Coburn's Our Man Flint movies of the 1960s.
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 of Bing Crosby's Swinging on a Star and Paul Anka's Side by Side feature on the movie's soundtrack.
Despite a star-studded cast, the film generally received negative critical reviews and was overall a box office bomb. It received Razzie Awards for Worst Director, Worst Screenplay and Worst Picture. In his autobiography, With Nails, Richard E. Grant diarizes the production of the film in detail, noting the ad-hoc nature of the production and extensive rewriting and replotting during the actual filming. Since its release, it has built up a small but loyal fanbase who have held it to be an original and daring project by Willis that did not receive its due. Others have seen it as classic bad cinema, roasting it much like Plan 9 from Outer Space. Willis went on to become one of the leading box-office stars of the 1990s, but has not made any further forays into scriptwriting. Of interest is how the film is considered to be popular in Japan due to some similarities to the Lupin III manga and animated series which involves capers and the like.
Part of the reason for the box office failure is the film is clearly a comedy and was marketed as an action film one year after the success of Die Hard 2 (and three years after the original Die Hard). When the film came to home video the tag line "Catch The Adventure, Catch The Excitement, Catch The Hawk" was changed to "Catch The Adventure, Catch The Laughter, Catch The Hawk". The film has fared much better on home video.
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[edit] Plot
The story begins with Eddie "Hudson Hawk" Hawkins (Willis), a master burglar and safe-cracker attempting to celebrate his first day of parole from prison with a cappuccino. Before he can get it, he is blackmailed by various entities, including his own parole officer, a minor Newark Mafia family (headed by Stallone), and the CIA (Coburn along with Caruso and Toussaint and others), into doing several dangerous art heists. Throughout the movie, Hudson attempts to enjoy a cappuccino, but is foiled each time.
The holders of the various players' puppet strings turn out to be a "psychotic American corporation", Mayflower Industries, run by a husband-and-wife team (Grant and Bernhard) and their blade-slinging butler. The company, headquartered in the E.U.R. in Rome, is seeking to take over the world by reconstructing "La Macchina dell'Oro", a machine purportedly invented by Leonardo da Vinci which converts lead into gold. A special assembly of crystals needed for the machine to function are hidden in a variety of Leonardo's artworks: the Sforza, the Da Vinci Codex, and a scale model of DaVinci's helicopter design.
Sister Anna Baragli (MacDowell), initially his tail and later his refuge (and love interest), is an operative for a secretive and unnamed Vatican counter-espionage agency, which makes an unexplained arrangement with the CIA to assist in the Roman portion of Hudson's mission, though apparently intending all along to use the connection to foil the robbery at St. Peter's Basilica.
The movie culminates in a spectacular showdown at Leonardo's castle, between the remaining CIA agents, the Mayflowers, and the team of Hudson, Five-Tone, and Baragli, to stop the Mayflowers from successfully operating the machine.
| Cast | |
| Actor/Actress | Role |
| Bruce Willis | Eddie "Hudson Hawk" Hawkins |
| Danny Aiello | Tommy Five-Tone |
| Andie MacDowell | Anna Baragli |
| Richard E. Grant | Darwin Mayflower |
| Sandra Bernhard | Minerva Mayflower |
| James Coburn | George Kaplan |
| Donald Burton | Alfred |
| Andrew Bryniarski | Butterfinger |
| David Caruso | Kit Kat |
| Lorraine Toussaint | Almond Joy |
| Don Harvey | Snickers |
| Doug Martin | Igg |
| Steve Martin | Ook |
| Leonardo Cimino | The Cardinal |
| Frank Stallone | Cesar Mario |
| Carmine Zozzora | Antony Mario |
| Burtt Harris | Gates |
[edit] Trivia
The crystal used by Da Vinci and subsequently the Mayflowers to make lead into gold is featured as a paper weight on the desk of Buddy Ackerman in the film Swimming with Sharks. Buddy Ackerman is a producer of famously violent and bad films.
The release of this film prompted professional skateboarder Tony Hawk, who had named his son Hudson Riley Hawk, born a year later, to begin using the name "Riley" to avoid confusion.
[edit] Soundtrack Listing
Music composed and conducted by Michael Kamen for the film. Released by Varese Sarabande in 1991, there are eleven tracks in all.
- Hudson Hawk Theme - Dr. John (05:38)
- Swinging on a Star - Bruce Willis and Danny Aiello (02:53)
- Side by Side - Bruce Willis and Danny Aiello (02:18)
- Leonardo (04:55)
- Welcome to Rome (01:46)
- Stealing the Codex (01:58)
- Igg and Ook (02:22)
- Cartoon Fight (02:54)
- The Gold Room (05:57)
- Hawk Swing (03:41)
- Hudson Hawk Theme (Instrumental) (05:18)
[edit] Video Game
A video game based on the film was released in 1991 for various home computers and game consoles. Sony Imagesoft released versions of the game for the NES and Game Boy, while Ocean Software released it for the Commodore 64, Amiga, ZX Spectrum, and Atari ST. It is a side-scrolling game where the player, as the Hawk, must steal the Sforza and the Codex 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 down his adversaries, which are mainly daschunds that through him off the roof.
