Real Men Aren't Quite Sure How to Feel About Hudson Hawk

Bad guys named after candy bars

 

As a starting point for the weirdness that is Hudson Hawk, why not start with the bad guys – a group of four ex-CIA assassins named Snickers, Kit Kat (played by David Caruso in his best and most expressive role in years – not only does he only communicate through note card for the entire film, but he spends a few scenes dressing up as and imitating other characters just for the fun of it), Butterfinger, and Almond Joy. Evidently, these are code names (“we used to all be named after STD’s,” Almond Joy says at one point; “You have any idea what it’s like spending a year as Chlamydia?”), but for no reason whatsoever, each character tends to frequently eat the candy bar associated with their name.

Considering Hudson Hawk is really just an absurdist comedy dressed up as a summer action film, what is the viewer to take from this? Is the naming of these criminals meant to be an ironic, clever jab at action films whose enemies are so cookie-cutter that they can only be differentiated by name and appearance? Is it meant to be an attack on overt product placement in action films? Or did co-writer and star Bruce Willis simply think it’d be funny to name bad guys after candy bars, and he left it at that? The characters come off as stupid and unthreatening – but were they supposed to? The myriad of questions prompted by these characters’ existence is enough to make them interesting, even if they really aren’t.

 

The fairytale-style bookends

 

The beginning and ending of the film are – without rhyme, reason, or warning – narrated by an old, wise-sounding man who tells the story of Hudson Hawk as it were the tale of Romeo and Juliet. Considering the actual film is cartoony and anything but epic or fairytale-ish in nature, the bookends give the film an extremely surreal mood that the average viewer will either really enjoy or absolutely hate.

 

Bruce Willis knows how to mug

 

As mentioned earlier, Bruce Willis co-wrote the story, and as such a significant amount of the film is filled with Willis’ character spouting off clever one-liners and joking around – imagine Willis circa Moonlighting crossed with Willis circa Die Hard and you’ll get the general idea.

Because Hudson Hawk is nothing if not dichotomous, Willis’ antics are funny about half the time (when Andie MacDowell misses a bad guy and shoots Willis in the shoulder: “GAAH! STOP HELPING ME!”), but irritating as all hell the rest of the time, as seen in the above screenshot where Willis is almost brought to orgasm by a curious dog, who later gets kicked through a window. One thing is for sure, though: throughout the entire film, the single most niggling emotion the viewer will feel will be his desire to physically rip out the three gold earrings in Willis’ left ear. Forgive me, but they look fucking absurd.

 

The absurd gurney chase

 

 Roughly a third of the way through the film, Hudson is injured and wakes up in an ambulance, surrounded by a couple of gangsters known as the Mario Brothers (did I mention the film includes an ongoing Nintendo motif?). After jabbing a few hypodermic needles into one of the brothers’ faces, the back doors of the ambulance accidentally fly open and Hudson, riding a mobile gurney, flies out. What follows is one of the more cartoony chases in recent memory, as Hudson dodges traffic, grabs a stray cigarette thrown out of a car window (right before making sure to take one last drag off it), and deals with stupid bystanders (“Hey mister, are you gonna die?”) right before the ambulance pursuing him takes a wrong turn and, for no logical reason what-so-fucking-ever, explodes in a ball of fire.

Were this any other film, I’d be tempted to pass it off as a patently stupid car chase and leave it at that. But considering the film was intended as a satirical action-comedy and was directed by the dude who did Heathers, I have to wonder: was this chase supposed to be stupid and bombastic and unnecessary? If so, it may be a work of patent genius;  if not, it just sucks twelve different flavors of scrotum.

 

Andie MacDowell’s dolphin impression

 

When female lead Andie MacDowell is captured by the bad guys, one assumes that her subsequent interrogation scene will unfold more or less according to action movie cliché: someone yells at her to tell them where ____ is (in this case, Hudson Hawk), and when she refuses, she’s beaten around a bit but never reveals her secret so as to prove her loyalty to the side of righteousness.

Instead of all that shit, however, Andie simply ignores all of their questions and, wide-eyed, mutters the following:

“I must speak with the dolphins now.”

For literally the next ninety seconds, Andie MacDowell utters the most high-pitched, unusual and irritating impression of a dolphin I have heard or ever will hear for the rest of my life. For a cute Texan gal, MacDowell sure knows how to do a pretty goddamn terrifying dolphin impression.

 

Richard E Grant

 

If there’s one actor in Hudson Hawk who knows exactly what the hell he is doing and should be endlessly congratulated for it, it’s Richard E. Grant.  As one of the few actors who seems to genuinely enjoy his role in this cartoony clusterfuck of a film, Grant happily hams it up in every scene he’s in, and steals the movie as a result.

As a character who delivers dialogue like “What can I say? I’m the villain,” “History, tradition, culture: these are trophies I keep in my den as paperweights” and “Hudson Hawk go boom-boom; he dead,” Grant has a constant look of wide-eyed, maniacal glee that perfectly fits the tone of the film and results in a few genuine laughs.

After all, we’re talking about a villain who literally shouts “GO TEAM GO” and humps the air as his evil plan goes into effect – he’s a parody of your typical Bond villain, yeah, but he’s so incredibly over-the-top that he’s pretty damn fun to watch.

 

Sandra Bernhard

 

On the downside, Sandra Bernhard is in the film. So, there’s that.

 

The paralysis scene

 

Remember what I said about Bruce Willis and his ability to mug like there’s no tomorrow? The scene where he and Danny Aiello get paralyzed from the neck down might be the perfect example of this.

As both Willis and Aiello’s characters are mad as hell but do not have the physical ability to fight their enemies, the two, side by side on a couch, just sort of sit there for two or three minutes and angrily bite the air and yell whilst thrashing their necks back and forth in some showcase of unfiltered male aggression. It’s tough to explain without seeing the scene yourself – and no way am I going through the trouble of uploading it to YouTube – but if you ever want to see Bruce Willis at the absolute nadir of his career as a cool, tough guy, look no further than this scene.

 

The Jesus-Phone

 

As Andie Macdowell’s character is a secret spy for the Vatican, the pope directly contacts her through a wall-mounted Jesus phone that lights up whenever he calls.

Cut it any way you like: that’s pretty damn funny.

 

The least funny visual gag in the history of cinema

 

Generally speaking, I can defend most things in this film as ironic statements on the state of action films, or as screwball jokes misinterpreted by an audience hoping for another Die Hard film, but there is literally no way for me to explain why the climactic fight scene between Bruce Willis and James Coburn is so. Fucking. Bad.

After some fisticuffsmanship, Coburn kicks Willis in the stomach and causes him to double over. Coburn then kicks him in the face, causing Willis to stand back up, at which point he kicks him in the back and causes him to double over again. This goes on for a few seconds, but eventually Coburn stops kicking Willis altogether, but Willis continues to stand up and bend over again, as if he’s still being kicked. Think of one of those drinking birds and you’ll get the idea.

In addition to being pretty much nonsensical in every single way, the scene isn’t even remotely funny. There’s really nothing to be said for it: a mechanical winding noise can be loudly heard as Willis continues to stand up and bend over, as if his motions are beyond his control, but the scene doesn’t go anywhere from that point. Willis drops his hat at one point and bends down, at which point Coburn does a flying kick, misses Willis completely, and flies off the roof the two were standing on, but at no point in this scene does anything even approaching comedy ever come into play.

 

James Coburn’s dying words

 

Still, James Coburn’s dying words – heard a few minutes later, as he careens off a cliff atop a driverless limousine – are absolutely perfect. As the car speeds off the cliff, just moments away from exploding in the way all cars in action films tend to once they drop from large heights, Coburn looks at the camera and screams,

“MY PENSION!”

Then the car explodes and he dies.

Classic.

 

The most forced one-liner ever written

 

At the very, very end of the film (it seems like the movie is going to end about eight times before it actually does), Willis squares off against an evil, British butler with huge-ass knives coming out of his sleeves. After struggling with him and getting a painful-looking, but ultimately superficial blade wound to his chest (seriously, must all swordfights involve one character getting wounded in this fashion?), Bruce grabs the baddie’s knives, sticks them into the door on either side of the baddies head, and quickly slams the door. The baddie’s knives become unstuck from the door as he falls forward but as he hits the ground, the knives cross paths toward his neck and end up decapitating him.

It is at this point that Bruce looks at the body of his fallen foe and delivers the single most forced and unnatural post-kill one-liner I have ever heard:

“You won’t be attending that hat convention in July!”

Okay. Fine. We’ll say it’s a self-referential spoof of the typical and over-the-top one-liners we hear in regular action films on a daily basis. Sure. That doesn’t change the fact that this particular one-liner is more groan-inducing than a bad case of acid reflux. Seriously, hat convention? People don’t actually have conventions just to sit around and talk about hats, do they? And even if they did, you’re telling me that you couldn’t come up with a better decapitation-related one liner? My god.

 

“Side by Side”

 

For the sake of ending this installment of Real Men Love on an upbeat note, I do have to give props where props are due (even if a significant portion of the people who have seen this movie might disagree with me). Throughout the film, Hudson Hawk synchronizes heists and other escapades not by using a watch as any intelligent person would, but by singing a song to himself – the film has a running joke where other characters will offhandedly mention a song title and Hudson will immediately reply with the song’s running time. This storytelling conceit results in a carefree, entertaining heist sequence near the start of the film where Willis and Aiello steal a priceless artifact whilst separately singing “Swingin’ on a Star” so as to match up their movements. While that scene is cheesy and obviously unrealistic, it works as intended: it’s fun. The only downside is that “Swingin’ on a Star” is – and there’s no getting around this – a shitty-ass song.

Much more entertaining is the action sequence near the end: Willis and Aiello, armed with a rocket launcher, have once again teamed up to rescue Andie MacDowell from the bowels of Richard E Grant’s castle. Once again, the two use a song in order to synchronize their movements, but this time, the song is actually pretty good:  specifically, “Side by Side.”

Never before have I seen a film where the two male leads simultaneously sing together whilst firing rockets at bad guys, but I’m not too surprised to say that it’s something I’d like to see again. The “Side by Side” scene is like the “Swingin’ on a Star” scene, but with a better song and more explosions. Bruce Willis, Danny Aiello, showtunes, and explosions? What more could you want?

Well, quite a bit, incidentally. But hey; that’s why Real Men Aren’t Quite Sure How to Feel About Hudson Hawk.