Hudson Hawk Cost $65M and Lost $47M

May 28, 2014 by staff

Hudson Hawk Cost $65M and Lost $47M, After Bruce Willis turned ‘Die Hard’ (watch clips) into a massive hit, studios thought they could bank on the actor in this 1991 comic caper, but the box office returns simply flew the coop. Movie failed to swoop up ticket sales Hudson Hawk. The film’s total loss, Hudson Hawk cost $65M and lost $47M. Hudson Hawk is a 1991 American action comedy film directed by Michael Lehmann.

The live action film makes heavy use of cartoon-style slapstick, including sound effects, which enhances the movie’s signature surreal humour. The plot combines material based on conspiracy theories, secret societies, and historic mysteries, as well as outlandish “clockpunk” technology à la Coburn’s Our Man Flint movies of the 1960s.

A recurring plot device in the film has Hudson and his partner Tommy “Five-Tone” (Aiello) singing songs concurrently but separately, to time and synchronize their exploits. Willis-Aiello duets of Bing Crosby’s Swinging on a Star and Paul Anka’s Side by Side feature on the film’s soundtrack.

Eddie “Hudson Hawk” Hawkins (Bruce Willis) – “Hudson Hawk” is an expression that refers to the often bracing winds off of the Hudson river – is a master burglar and safe-cracker, attempting to celebrate his first day of parole from prison with a cappuccino. Before he can get it, he is blackmailed by various entities, including his own parole officer, a minor Newark Mafia family headed by the Mario brothers (a reference to Nintendo’s Mario Bros.), and the CIA into doing several dangerous art heists with his singing partner in crime, Tommy “Five-Tone” Messina (Danny Aiello).

The holders of the puppet strings turn out to be a “psychotic American corporation,” Mayflower Industries, run by husband and wife Darwin (Richard E. Grant) and Minerva Mayflower (Sandra Bernhard) and a blade-slinging butler, Alfred (Donald Burton). The company, headquartered in the Esposizione Universale Roma (E.U.R.) in Rome, seeks to take over the world by reconstructing “La Macchina dell’Oro”, a machine purportedly invented by Leonardo da Vinci (Stefano Molinari) which converts lead into gold. A special assembly of crystals needed for the machine to function are hidden in a variety of Leonardo’s artworks: the maquette of the Sforza, the Da Vinci Codex, and a scale model of DaVinci’s helicopter design. Sister Anna Baragli (Andie MacDowell) is an operative for a secretive Vatican counter-espionage agency, which has arranged with the CIA to assist in the Roman portion of Hawk’s mission, though apparently intending all along to foil the robbery at St. Peter’s Basilica.