Directed by Michael Lehmann
Written by Steven E. de Souza and Daniel Waters
Starring Bruce Willis, Danny Aiello, Andy MacDowell, James Coburn
Running time 1 hour and 40 minutes
Now on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber

by Alex Rudolph, Staff Writer

Synopsis of Hudson Hawk, per Letterboxd:

Eddie Hawkins, called Hudson Hawk has just been released from ten years of prison and is planning to spend the rest of his life honestly. But then the crazy Mayflower couple blackmail him to steal some of the works of Leonardo da Vinci. If he refuses, they threaten to kill his friend Tommy.

Hudson Hawk is a bananas movie, one of those Ishtars where a huge chunk of the filmgoing population is aware critics hated it but only around 5% of those people have actually seen it. It was Bruce Willis taking advantage of his megastar status to create an action-comedy vehicle and a character he could return to in the John McClane off-years. Willis' Hawk is an expert thief who, with his partner Tommy Five-Tone (Danny Aiello) and Vatican spy Sister Anna Baragli (Andie MacDowell), must steal Leonardo Da Vinci artifacts to stop a rich couple from completing a machine that will allow them to take over the world. A perfect encapsulation of the film's tone comes at the end when [SPOILER] Danny Aiello's character, who has died in a limo wreck only a few scenes earlier, shows up totally fine, explaining a sprinkler system saved him from an explosion. "Can you believe it?" he cheerfully asks, and Willis thinks for a second and says "Yeah! That's probably what happened!" Pure fun.

What features make it special?

• audio commentary from director Michael Lehmann

• featurette on the character's creation with Bruce Willis and Robert Kraft

• a monologue on her character by Sandra Bernhard

• Dr. John theme song music video

• deleted scenes

• trailers

Why you need to add it to your video library...

The trailers for other movies, usually superfluous features on a blu-ray, end up explaining Hudson Hawk's appeal pretty well. Listed below two spots for Hawk, there's one for 1994's Bruce Willis-starring Color of Night. I've never seen Color of Night and it looks like it could be fun, but the trailer plays like a parody of erotic thrillers. I know, however, that the film was played totally straight. You see the other stuff Willis was cranking out at the time and Hudson Hawk's silly slapstick feels all the more refreshing. Co-written by Steven E. de Souza (Die Hard, Street Fighter) and Daniel Waters (Heathers, Demolition Man), it's a little worse at being a live-action cartoon than what Joe Dante and Sam Raimi were making around the same time and much better than what John Landis was trying to accomplish. It's Three Stooges and Looney Tunes transposed onto an action movie at a time when stars were still quipping but also becoming a little more self-aware.

The deleted scenes are even more bizarre than the movie itself. Presented as a five-minute montage, they open with the deliciously inane text "In the original script, Hudson Hawk learns that his pet monkey, Little Eddie, was gunned down by hoods. The story was cut for time, but the following deleted scenes give a glimpse into who Little Eddie was." You know what's better than a monkey sidekick? The restraint to only discuss the monkey sidekick in the past tense. We see Little Eddie, but only as a wallet photo. Little Eddie has the same hat Hudson does. And Hudson finds out Eddie's been killed when his buddy hands him a newspaper whose front page is almost entirely devoted to the headline "Monkey Slain In Mob Hit!" In the next few scenes, Hudson confronts the mafia, who deny involvement, and discovers Little Eddie was actually taken out by a CIA goon played by James Coburn. It's just so beautifully stupid.

The most insightful part of the package ends up being the thirty-minute-long featurette with Willis and music producer Robert Kraft. The self-indulgence is grating in a way their film isn't (the first three minutes are spent with Kraft playing the piano as Willis mumbles and scats blues lyrics) and I don't especially care about all of the bars these guys used to work at in New York when they were just starting out, but when they actually discuss the film, you realize why it is the way it is. They met when Kraft was playing piano on stage and Willis started performing along from the audience with a harmonica, which is maybe the most obnoxious thing a person can do, and then became friends, batting around character names and ideas (Hudson started out as more of a young, inexperienced James Bond). Neither was in a place to make a movie, but Hudson Hawk was a fun thing to riff on, and when Willis got clout and a first-look deal with Touchstone, he called his buddy Robert and they created the thing they had joked about when they were a little younger.

The movie eventually went into the black after its release on home video, but the reason it flopped in the first place seemed to be, by Willis' estimation, its wacky tone. People expected another Die Hard and got him singing with Danny Aiello, and as he recalls this, Willis smiles wide. He knows he made a fun, ridiculously watchable movie at a time when his career could sustain a few knocks and he had the bravery and desire to absorb them. We don't get many movies like Hudson Hawk. You have to continue to appreciate them as they get more and more rare.

Hudson Hawk is available here.