This week over on my discord channel, we watched Hudson Hawk, a 1991 action-comedy starring Bruce WIllis, Danny Aiello and Andie MacDowell. The film sees Willis playing the role of Eddie Hawkins, a cat burgular who on the day he gets out of prison gets roped into a caper involving relics belonging to Leonardo da Vinci being mastered minded by Darwin and Minerva Mayflower (played by Richard E. Grant and Sand Bernhard) who want to dominate the world. It's very over the top and has a very quick pace, so if you're not paying attention to minor details you will get totally loss and feel like it's too much (much like how Gene Siskel and Robert Ebert were when they reviewed it 29 years ago)
The strength of Hudson Hawk as a film is the fact that from the first scene till the last scene, everything has a pay off. In the opening minutes we given a narration about da Vinci working on a bronze horse but needed more of the metal because it became scarce due to a war, so he creates a machine to turn lead to bronze, but the end result is lead being turned to gold. As if sensing the implication of such a device, da Vinci ponders what to as he takes the key components, goes to his work shop and we see him look at the codex, a scale model of the horse statue he was going to be working on and a model of his helicopter. All of which become key items in plot that Eddie is tasked to steal. Also in the opening we see a glider that becomes quite key in the film's climax as well as a woman posing for Mona Lisa who has really bad teeth, which is picked up as soon as the film transitions to 1991 when we see Eddie getting out of prison and the check out clerk has the same bad teeth. There are numerous sets ups and call backs so nothing feels wasted at any point in time.
In regards to how this film is written, there is a lot of snappy dialog and quite of few one-liners, with nearly every major character having a time to shine. Some would argue that this film would've been better if only the characters played by Willis and Aiello were the only silly one with everyone else playing it straight, but when you take into account that James Coburn's character is almost a direct reference to the 'Flint' films he starred in, and how everything as a nice pep to it, I can't really imagine this film being done in a different form or fashion. Besides a lot of dialog becomes running gags that all end up having payoffs (example Aiello's character of Tommy Five-Tone asking if he missed anything is said towards the beginning of the film and at the end) so it wall connects.
One final thought here, as something did occur to me when watching Hudson Hawk today was how off the charts Sandra Bernhard's performance of Minerva Mayflower is, she comes across as a live-action Disney villain to the point where you want to see and hear more dialog from her. She basically steals the movie from the moment she struts into the auction house a fourth of the way into the film. It makes me wonder why no one tried casting her to play a lead villain after this as she could've really set a high standard for antagonists in live-action Disney-styled films.
