Hudson Hawk **½ (1991, Bruce Willis, Danny Aiello, Andie MacDowell, James Coburn, Richard E Grant, Sandra Bernhard) – Classic Movie Review 3447

Director Michael Lehmann’s 1991 spoof adventure caper is game for a laugh but alas it is all too erratic and unfocused to provide the big guffaws and chortles you’d expect. Catch the Hawk, they advertised, but folks didn’t want to.

Star Bruce Willis is as engaging as ever as Eddie Hawkins aka Hudson Hawk, an ex-con cat burglar just released from ten years of prison. He’s planning to go straight, but then the crazy Darwin and Minerva Mayflower blackmail him into stealing some Leonardo da Vinci works.

So he gets entangled in a string of robberies and one-liners, culminating in the theft of a da Vinci from the Vatican. Willis’s witticisms and co-star Danny Aiello’s easygoing charm as his cohort-in-crime Tommy Five-Tone just about hold this shaky attempt at an action comedy thriller together.

Back then, it cost an awful lot of money (reportedly $70 million) and little of that is up there on the screen, though admittedly it does always look good thanks to Dante Spinotti’s cinematography, and some of the set pieces are spectacularly done, lavishly so in producer Joel Silver’s big budget.

For some reason, the public took against the picture in a big way, making it a spectacular flop at the box office, grossing only $17million in the US, despite its caper movie appeal and Willis being at the height of his popularity. But it still has enough going for it to making it more or less consistently, if only mildly entertaining.

Indeed, there are times when Steven E de Souza and Daniel Waters’s screenplay and Lehmann’s handling show considerable wit and style. And there are enough glimpses of those to see what a classy film this could have been.

Also starring in a good and interesting cast are Andie MacDowell as Anna Baragli, James Coburn mysteriously playing a character called George Kaplan, Richard E Grant and Sandra Bernhard as Darwin and Minerva Mayflower, Donald Burton, Don Harvey, David Caruso, Andrew Bryniarski, Lorraine Toussaint, Frank Stallone, Carmine Zozzora and Stefano Molinari as  Leonardo da Vinci.

In North by Northwest (1959), advertising man Roger O Thornhill finds himself grabbed by spies when he is mistaken for a man named George Kaplan.

Director and producer Lehmann is also known for Heathers (1988), Airheads (1994), The Truth about Cats and Dogs (1995) and 40 Days and 40 Nights (2002) .

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3447

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/