I wanted to but couldn't!

Expected more

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Comic action film centering on crackerjack cat burglar Bruce Willis, fresh from prison, who is blackmailed into stealing priceless works of art by a psychotic wealthy couple (Richard A. Grant and Sandra Bernhard) lest they murder his best friend Danny Aeillo.Hudson Hawk is notorious in the annals of legendary horrible film-making as a total debacle. Still, such films can be fun in retrospect. Not so much for this one. Willis is the driving creative force behind the film (and I use creative cautiously), having been a producer, writer and lead actor. One wonders why he stopped himself from stepping into the director's chair, but I guess even Willis has his limits, so he graciously allows director Michael Lehman to fall on the sword in that capacity. One would think since Willis wrote the mess of a screenplay that it would at least play to his strengths. If so, then one can only presume that constant smirking and smug arrogance are Willis' only cards to play. Truthfully, if an actress had perpetrated this worthless spectacle, her career would have been over before the print on the first reviews was dry. As evidence of the Hollywood double standard, Willis was allowed to carry on despite disastrous box office with nary a blip.The film's biggest clever flourish is having Willis and Aeillo carry out their heists in time to music. It sounds much better than it plays. And one comes to the fast conclusion that this was less an interesting idea, then an attempt to allow Willis and Aeillo, neither particularly good singers, to defile some otherwise sturdy old standards.The plot - or whatever you call this - is so insane and all over the map that it is virtually incomprehensible. It plays like something someone wrote after a major bender and while still experiencing intermittent black-outs. A perfect example is the leading lady role. Andie MacDowell looks luminous, but literally seems to have no idea what she is doing in this film (nor do we for that matter). She is cast as an undercover secret agent nun dispatched by the Vatican to...who knows. Ironically casting MacDowell as a nun means that Willis does not have to waste time developing any romantic chemistry with her and, although she manages to be present for the film's concluding action scenes, she functions as little more than adornment or furniture for all the impact she has.The less said about Willis in the title role, the better. Grant and especially Bernhard are virtually unendurable contributing unwatchable performances as the Nick and Nora Charles of villainy. Truthfully, we never have much of an idea of what they are up to and they seem less villainous than simply an endurance test for the viewer, often shrieking their lines as though they caught their big toe in a mouse trap. Aeillo is equally appalling. With Do the Right Thing and Moonstruck, Aeillo seemed briefly to actually be a decent actor, before degenerating in whiny second banana/bad character roles. Here, he is supposed to be funny and winning, but instead seems oddly pathetic and has never more than here resembled an overgrown mutant man-child. One can easily see him cast as the big screen's Baby Huey with no make-up or costume required. At one point, his character seemingly hurls to a fiery death and one realizes what a relief it is to no longer have him on screen.Willis's vanity piece is perpetually dumb where it should be funny, smug where it should be clever, loud and chaotic where it should be exciting, boring where it should be fast-paced, and finally a complete waste of space and time.

I've read some of the good reviews of Hudson Hawk, and if those folks (many here on IMDb) found enjoyment out of it, that's your prerogative. But you can call it a surrealistic/absurdist/satirical masterpiece all you want; the question has to come down for every single person watching Hudson Hawk: is this FUNNY? Perhaps in those large capital letters you may think so. I didn't find any of this BS funny. Hudson Hawk isn't surreal, and it wouldn't know surreal if it came and bit it in the dick with a toothbrush attached to a giraffe on fire. It's a movie made by clever people (no, really, they are, the guys made Heathers right before this, Michael Lehmann and Daniel Waters) that shreds genuine cleverness for self-satisfied smugness. This film is so satisfied with itself, but it never lets the audience see something just remotely close to reality so that the absurdity can find a foothold.I knew of this movie just by reputation - it was a bomb so notorious in its time it almost (just almost) made the previous year's Bonfire of the Vanities (also, coincidentally, with Bruce Willis) not seem so bad. It's a movie that cost upwards of 45 million dollars - at a time when that sort of thing wasn't done - and the movie is and isn't there at the same time. Sure, you have a super-star like Bruce Willis (and other names like Danny Aiello and Andie McDowell and, uh, Richard E Grant and Sandra Bernhard and James Coburn, people who may not have cost much but they're there I guess). Sure, you have locations in New York city and Rome, so there's a lot of action and fancy locations. And sure, there's... what else is there? I'm sure the actors were game for this, but the script is one of the biggest piles of dog crap I have ever encountered in all of my years of watching movies. Every other line has to be a joke, or some witty/smugly clever line. But it's not, it's stupid, it's lines that constantly, consistently, take the audience out of the movie (or it did for me). It's one thing to have a caper involving some sacred object from centuries past that multiple parties are after - right now I'm sure you can think of a number of movies right off the top of your head (Notorious and an Indiana Jones movie were ones for me). But here, it's completely artificial.It's not that artificial can always be a death knell; filmmakers for decades have used a sort of heightened, stylized form of dialog for characters to be kind of cool and interesting - watch the Ocean's 11 movies and you see it done with actual style and sincerity, since a) it's actually funny lines being delivered, and b) the filmmakers know to give a few minutes to let the characters be sort of real people. Here, from right after a prologue showing the DaVinci whatever thing, when Hudson Hawk is leaving prison onward, it's an onslaught of snappy dialog that doesn't snap, and things like, oh, musical numbers (?!) set as Willis and Aiello pull off a cat burglary/heist and it's so, so bad.This comes down to just being cartoonish; I almost wish it had been a cartoon, even an episode of f***ing Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers, whatever, and at least there could be some context for some of the things that happens with the supporting characters. Not even Andie McDowell, who appears at first to be possibly the straight person to react to all of these who-cares-about-a-top-lets-go-to-outer-space actors, can resist making dolphin noises when under some hypnosis/paralyzing drug from the bad guys. And any thought of Willis showing just some restraint is thrown out the window (apparently Willis got in clashes with the director and kept putting in his ideas, and incidentally has a 'co-story' credit, goodness).I'd tell you more about the story, but who cares, really? This is a movie where the writers and director think they've got a smash comedy on their hands - jokes about Nintendo and Cappuccino drinks abound, for example, and about stuff like the Vatican but it's so safe, even as it's an R-rated movie - but no arbiter of good taste seemed to be on the set while every actor made themselves into jerks. Sometimes for things to be funny, you have to play it STRAIGHT, to not make it like you're in on the joke, and that is the central problem with this movie.There's actually one almost decent sequence, where Willis has to steal a sacred notebook from a Roman museum, and here there is very little dialog (there's no show-tune, thank god), and how Hawk goes about stealing this item and getting away shows a few good ideas that the filmmakers had. But, on the whole, I just felt bad for a number of people here (Aiello especially, and Grant as well after seeing him be hysterical in Withnail & I). For Willis... this seems about right for his career at the time. I just didn't find it funny, and even then it would be a mess.

HUDSON HAWK is one of those movies you just have to see to believe ... mostly to believe it ever actually happened. It's like a movie version of Bruce Willis' The Return of Bruno shtick, but without the actor's natural charisma. It's an unlikable performance, which is surprising, seeing as he wasn't yet the complete prick we all know today. The idea of Willis and Danny Aiello timing their cat burglar heist to the length of a song was kind of amusing, but the movie needed more of that jackassery. Instead, there's a lot of forced comedy, Sandra Bernhard (agh!) and long stretches of ridiculous story that you wish would go somewhere. This movie was already pretty silly while we were still stateside, but once we land in Rome, it all goes whacko. But it's not the good kind, and this thing was a real chore to sit through.4/10

Hudson hawk is shanghaied by various powerful people the moment he gets out of prison into pulling a museum job but of course this is just the beginning of his troubles. One of those hilarious underrated classics that pop up every now and again.The world and his wife lined up to criticise this film . They were ,of course, all completely wrong. Its part smarmy heist caper, part musical, part buddy action movie it does not clearly fit into one genre so of course people hated it.The comedy works the stunts are good and the plot is strangely compelling. Id advise you disregard everyone's opinion (except mine of course) and see it your self