How hated was “Hudson Hawk” when it was released in 1991, beyond its dismal box office and poor library press?
A good indicator of the position of Bruce Willis’ dream project in culture can be found in a review by Stephen Hunter, then a film critic for the Baltimore Sun.
Mind you, this wasn’t his first chance to see the movie again. He wrote a second review defending himself from moviegoers calling his head on a pike.
“Has any movie in recent history been so brutalized so quickly? Across America, reviews from top to bottom, left and right, pedants and geniuses, plot synopses and gestalt decoders, agree on one thing: this asshole stinks. That leaves two of us – myself and a reviewer in a town 40 miles south – who dared to like the movie,” Hunter wrote. “How could I love ‘Hudson Hawk’ so much? It’s easy. When I sat down in the theater, I started laughing and laughed for two hours. So sue me.
Willis stars as Eddie Hawkins in a story the actor crafted with fellow musician Robert Kraft. It features a world domination plot, Leonardo Da Vinci, a musical number from Willis and Danny Aiello and David Caruso as Kit Kat, one of many characters using candy bars as code names.
Hawk is a legendary cat burglar fresh out of jail who just wants a cappuccino. He almost immediately finds himself running from security guards and secret agents with his buddy Tommy Five-Tone (Aiello) and trying to save the world…or something like that.
The film never takes its plot seriously, so viewers are advised not to either.
At the time of its release, “Hudson Hawk” was widely considered a Willis vanity project after the $65 million film couldn’t even raise $20 million domestically. It also “won” three Razzies for Worst Director (Michael Lehman), Worst Screenplay (Steven E. DeSouza, Bruce Willis, Robert Kraft), and Worst Picture.
FAST FACT: Richard E. Grant, who plays one of the villains in ‘Hudson Hawk,’ thought he would never work again after attending a screening of the film. “So with the best of intentions, I think it’s like internet dating or any dating: you go into something hoping you’re going to fall in love and it’s going to work out…and then, of course , it’s a living nightmare!” he told the Guardian in 2020.
“Looking at how it became a cult movie and what people come up to me on the streets saying about it, they dig into the fact that it was making fun of itself and it was satire. And I think nobody understood it when it came out. They thought — they didn’t know what to make of it,” Willis said when meeting with Kraft years later for one of several video releases at home of “Hudson Hawk”.
According to Willis, early drafts of the film’s script leaned toward a younger James Bond vibe, but the filmmaker pushed for a more comedic bent.
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Hunter may have been on his own in 1991, but in recent years “Hudson Hawk” has received retrospective praise, mostly for being a one-of-a-kind cinematic left hook. It may be a vanity project, but it’s a vanity project that only Willis could do.
The actor has had his well-publicized Hollywood friction over the years. Yet the outpouring of support from the creatives who have worked with him since news of his retirement and initial diagnosis of aphasia (later diagnosed as frontotemporal degeneration) show beneath the glitz and glamor that he was only an artist with a taste for the different, the funny, the weird that most A-listers tend to want to avoid.
Directors M. Night Shyamalan and Quentin Tarantino described the man as something of a mentor early in their careers, helping projects like ‘The Sixth Sense’ and ‘Pulp Fiction’ secure funding. He’s the guy who wore goofy outfits for late night star David Letterman for no real reason and chatted with fans in the comments section of Ain’t It Cool News while promoting “Live Free or Die Hard” from 2007.
This Jersey lad never took fame very seriously and seemed to look at everything with a puzzled but loving smirk, always thinking more of the cat burglar than the hero of James Bondian.
“Hudson Hawk” is Willis from top to bottom. This is a movie that takes nothing seriously at a time, but is also deadly serious about every frame. The big budget can be seen on camera, where it should be, for Joel Silver’s production.
“Hudson Hawk” breaks the fourth wall (a young Frank Stallone gets “even your brother can understand” instructions) and includes humor that has some critics scratching their heads. They couldn’t figure out what Willis was up to as Caruso’s mute Kit Kat pops up repeatedly and the characters survive explosive, Looney Tunes-style situations.
The film’s climax comes early when Willis and Aiello perform Bing Crosby’s “Swinging on a Star” as they pull off a heist, using the song to time the robbery. It’s smart, sharp, charming and unique. It’s the longest movie sequence where everyone feels like they’re aiming and hitting the exact same target.
Even when everyone seems to be aiming at a different target, it still adds to the film’s utter, wondrous craziness.
In his chat with Kraft, Willis lovingly described the randomness of “Hudson Hawk,” admitting that Tommy Five-Tone was his favorite name from the movie, but he has no idea what that means.
It just seems fun.
In light of Willis’ retirement and current battle for his health, his latest film comes as “Assassin,” a mostly cookie-cutter VOD sci-fi film released in March.
There are a number of incredible works that showcase Willis’ talent, but none show the artist more clearly than ‘Hudson Hawk’. There are always outbursts and Willis being sarcastic as always, but it’s also arguably the moment the actor had the most creative control of his career.
He decided to pour all his juices into a madhouse production based on a crazy idea two starving artists concocted when Hollywood was just a dream.
Hudson Hawk is Bruce Willi’s film, and in a world where he will never return to the screen, it’s something to appreciate more and more.
NOTE: You can learn more about frontotemporal degeneration at the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration.
Zachary Leeman is the author of publisher Gilded Masque’s novel “Nigh” and has covered politics and culture for LifeZette, Mediaite and others.
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