Hudson Hawk

I like bad movies (as you can see by looking at some of the titles). Movies so bad they're funny. So does the rest of the country. The Rocky Horror Picture Show is the classic bad movie, and look how popular it became. Look how famous Jim Carrey has become. They even like bad in France, why else would they watch Gerard DePardieu and (God help them) Jerry Lewis. But when someone big does bad, and does it expensively, we castigate them with a vengeance, which explains why so many people slammed Hudson Hawk.

Hudson Hawk stars Bruce Willis as (coincidentally enough) Hudson Hawk, a cat burglar who has just been paroled. Hawk is like a grown up version of Macaulay Culkin (who thankfully isn't in this film), he's a smug smart aleck, and you just want to go up to him and slap that stupid grin off of his face. Fortunately, lots of people in this movie feel the same way, and spend lots of time slapping Bruce Willis around (that alone should be worth the price of a rental). Danny Aiello plays a foul mouthed Italian (gee, what a stretch) who spouts four letter words while helping Hawk pull off an art heist. At the gallery Hawk had just ripped off the night before, we meet Andie MacDowell as a nun(???) who works for the Vatican's secret service agency, and after forgetting her vows, becomes Willis's love interest. The Mayfairs, an insane brother and sister team played by Sandra Bernhard (Bernhard as a psychotic, who'd of thunk it) and Richard Grant (in a career low for a normally fine actor), are trying to get parts of a crystal that turns lead into gold. Da Vinci (who made the crystal) hid the parts in various places, including the horse sculpture that Willis steals first, a model of a flying machine (which James Coburn (in the part of a CIA guy gone nuts) and his assistants steal) and the Codex (one of Da Vinci's notebooks, which Willis steals from the Vatican before Bill Gates had a chance to buy it (the Codex, not the Vatican)). The movie also has David Caruso in a part where he doesn't speak (large cheer), and ends up getting shot with a crossbow (very large cheer). Danny Aiello gets blown up (large cheer) but survives in a flurry of four letter words (large boo).

The movie is bad, but I said that up front. It's also funny, as long as you aren't a studio exec who paid an outrageous amount of money to Bruce Willis for what he said would be the comedy of the year. But for a few bucks, what can you loose.