Bonkers Bruce Willis Heist Movie Is A Hidden 90s Gem
Bruce Willis has had an amazing Hollywood career, from the “will they, won’t they” detective series Moonlighting to becoming an action star thanks to Die Hard, he’s done everything there is to do. But what’s been forgotten to time over the years is one of his most bizarre movies, the 90s heist comedy Hudson Hawk. A box office bomb at the time, the film has aged well because it’s a live-action cartoon and is not to be taken seriously at all.
A Singing And Dancing Safecracker
Co-written by Bruce Willis, Hudson Hawk is about a veteran safecracker infamous for his precise timing during a heist. It turns out that he and his partner, Tommy (Danny Aiello), sing while stealing, timing everything according to the song lyrics, and yes, Willis can actually sing. A blues musician in his spare time, playing Hudson Hawk is as close to playing himself as the star ever got on the big screen.
A Thin Barely Coherent Plot
The actual plot of Hudson Hawk involves the pair being blackmailed to help steal crystals to power an ancient machine of Leonardo Davinci’s that can turn lead into gold. Along the way, they cross paths with a Vatican secret agent (Andie MacDowell) working with the CIA (which includes David Caruso as Agent Kit Kat) to try and stop the evil Mayflowers, Darwin, and Minerva (played by Richard E. Grant and Sandra Bernhard as delightfully over the top villains).
I’ll be honest: the plot barely holds together, but what makes the movie fun is the absurd moment-to-moment comedy.
A Cartoon Come To Life
There are exploding limos, cartoonish rocket launchers, a high-speed secret Vatican subway (oddly, that bit is a real thing), DaVinci’s flying machine, and a showdown in an ancient European castle. Hudson Hawk is not meant to be The Thomas Crown Affair or even Ocean’s 11; it’s Rocky and Bullwinkle. Go in with that expectation, and the film goes from being a bizarre disappointment and waste of Bruce Willis’s talents to a Saturday morning cartoon coming to life.
Everything Is Dialed Up To 11
Hudson Hawk features no straight-laced performances for the outlandish cast of characters to play off of, with the closest being James Coburn’s Agent Caplan, but beyond him, everyone is chewing up the scenery and going as big as possible. Bruce Willis can do subtle, but as the notorious safecracker, everything is dialed up to 11. Even the physical comedy, including a highway ride on a hospital gurney, takes a dumb gag and cranks it up to the point you can’t believe this was ever made.
A Box Office Bomb Turned Cult Hit
REVIEW SCORE
My first experience with Hudson Hawk was the horrible NES video game tie-in, and it wasn’t until a few years ago that I bothered watching the movie for the first time, and I was blown away. It’s easy to see why this was considered a historic box office bomb, bringing in $90 million worldwide and costing Tri-Star Pictures $90 million in total losses, because it’s nothing like any of Bruce Willis’s other films. What it is is the type of comedy you’ll never see made today.
Hudson Hawk would never, ever be made after the late 90s when studios stopped taking risks on broad, over-the-top comedies. Thankfully, it’s available today through Video on Demand via Amazon Prime, Google Play, AppleTV, and YouTube. Know what to expect, and enjoy Bruce Willis as you’ve never seen him before.
