Quartile rating: 5.5/10 · 1 rating
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 famously troubled production that became a notorious box office bomb. The plot is a chaotic mess of tonal inconsistencies, lurching between slapstick comedy, action, and spy thriller without cohering. The acting is broadly cartoonish — Willis mugs through it with charm but the villains (the Mayflowers) are grating rather than entertainingly over-the-top. Cinematography is competent with decent location work in Rome and Vatican settings. The film has a certain bizarre novelty in its musical-heist gimmick (characters timing heists to songs) and its gleefully anarchic energy, giving it cult status, but the execution is too muddled to rate it highly. The ending is rushed and unsatisfying, resolving the sprawling conspiracy with little payoff.