When Producers Thought, Let's Put Goldie Hawn in Anything and See What Happens
Bird On a Wire (1990) was shot mainly in British Columbia, Canada, though it takes place in Atlantic City, Detroit, Racine, Wisconsin, and rural Wisconsin. The Wisconsin shots looked unlike Wisconsin. I've often been disappointed that movies take the route of pretending to show specific locations, but they really just get shot in one area. Hollywood and surroundings in southern California have stood in for ancient Babylon, the Old West, and just about anywhere else, including the surfaces of other planets.
Bird On a Wire cost $20 million in 1990, $39 million in today's dollars. It made around $138 million in box office, though it was reviewed negatively by a majority of critics. I suspect they didn't care for the sprawling nature of the story, given that it deals with Rick (Mel Gibson) and Marianne (Goldie Hawn) on the run from two former DEA agents (Bill Duke and David Carradine) who want revenge on Rick for his past cooperation with the government in exposing the corrupt agents' crimes.
It's a thin plot, powered by the two leads. If you don't like Gibson and Hawn, you'll hate this movie since they're in most of it, arguing, making nice, arguing, making nice and making love, getting into goofy situations, like when Marianne gets menaced by a huge cockroach in a dirty motel bathroom. Much of the film is meant to be funny, and occasionally it is. One sequence with a motorcycle cop in Racine, Wisconsin (but it's really Victoria, Canada) involves wet cement and is somewhat amusing.
The dragnet out to get Rick and Marianne is a 1990-type operation. Surveillance and tracking of suspects has come a long way since then. Rick and Marianne would get captured by the police and FBI within a few days if this film took place now.
It was fun seeing the old computers, telephones, cars, Goldie Hawn's big hair, and in one scene, a cell phone the size of a brick, with a thick antenna.
By 1990, both Gibson and Hawn had acted in a lot of movies and were big stars. Goldie Hawn, at forty-four, still looked great with a timeless cuteness that helps carry the film past some rough spots. Action comedy isn't easy to pull off. Amidst wild stunts and adrenalin-pumping shots, it's hard to balance what is essentially violence with the idea that this is supposed to be funny. Explosions and car crashes, ordinary people having to get quickly out of the way of pursuits, isn't quite like Moe Howard hitting Curly on the head with a hammer. The Stooges benefit from being ridiculous.
In Bird On a Wire, property damage fills numerous scenes. What does Rick's flight for his life do to the economic lives of those whose businesses are damaged? Who owns the motorcycle he steals, and how did the owner losing his or her motorbike deal with going outside to find his ride gone? Did this fuck up the owner's life?
I'm more interested in a movie that would deal with aftermaths rather than the crazy whirlwind ripping up society. The fleeing pair go to a place in the Wisconsin (Canadian) countryside run by a veterinarian played by the gorgeous Joan Severance. She used to employ Rick when he was in the Witness Protection Program. She extracts buckshot from his ass, exchanges dark looks with Marianne, and when the inevitable menace comes to get Rick in the form of a helicopter with two heavies hired by a rogue FBI agent who betrayed Rick's identity to the corrupt former DEA agents, property damage ensues, machine gun fire blasting buildings, endangering the numerous animals on the farm. Rick and Marianne steal the veterinarian's two-seat airplane and soon wreck it. We never get back to Joan Severance, whose livelihood and property have been slammed by human chaos.
The climax takes place in a zoo where Rick worked for a time. Animals are set loose upon the villains, one of the buildings is wrecked in the process with three corpses lying there to be found by the morning crew, I guess. Rick and Marianne sail away at the end on a boat he's named after his penis. How the two manage to not get arrested is their once in a lifetime miracle.
John Badham, the director, is a skilled action filmmaker. He can handle an action scene with the best of them. I've never thought him to be profound; rather, he's interesting as a slick maker of professional quality cinema. In recent years, he's gone over to television directing.
Bird On a Wire has the key problem of relying too much on the stardom of its two leads. A little less of Gibson and Hawn (although they're both appealing movie stars) and more David Carradine and Bill Duke would balance the film better. The latter two are inexplicably absent from a large piece of the movie. I wondered several times what they were doing while Goldie and Mel argued and made up, made up and argued.
The film misses more than it hits, with too many dumb moves by characters. On the other hand, it's an interesting piece of 1980s-style American action cinema that happened to come out in 1990. I suspect the film has entered semi-obscurity in the memories of moviegoers from that time.
Vic Neptune
Bird On a Wire (1990) was shot mainly in British Columbia, Canada, though it takes place in Atlantic City, Detroit, Racine, Wisconsin, and rural Wisconsin. The Wisconsin shots looked unlike Wisconsin. I've often been disappointed that movies take the route of pretending to show specific locations, but they really just get shot in one area. Hollywood and surroundings in southern California have stood in for ancient Babylon, the Old West, and just about anywhere else, including the surfaces of other planets.
Bird On a Wire cost $20 million in 1990, $39 million in today's dollars. It made around $138 million in box office, though it was reviewed negatively by a majority of critics. I suspect they didn't care for the sprawling nature of the story, given that it deals with Rick (Mel Gibson) and Marianne (Goldie Hawn) on the run from two former DEA agents (Bill Duke and David Carradine) who want revenge on Rick for his past cooperation with the government in exposing the corrupt agents' crimes.
It's a thin plot, powered by the two leads. If you don't like Gibson and Hawn, you'll hate this movie since they're in most of it, arguing, making nice, arguing, making nice and making love, getting into goofy situations, like when Marianne gets menaced by a huge cockroach in a dirty motel bathroom. Much of the film is meant to be funny, and occasionally it is. One sequence with a motorcycle cop in Racine, Wisconsin (but it's really Victoria, Canada) involves wet cement and is somewhat amusing.
The dragnet out to get Rick and Marianne is a 1990-type operation. Surveillance and tracking of suspects has come a long way since then. Rick and Marianne would get captured by the police and FBI within a few days if this film took place now.
It was fun seeing the old computers, telephones, cars, Goldie Hawn's big hair, and in one scene, a cell phone the size of a brick, with a thick antenna.
By 1990, both Gibson and Hawn had acted in a lot of movies and were big stars. Goldie Hawn, at forty-four, still looked great with a timeless cuteness that helps carry the film past some rough spots. Action comedy isn't easy to pull off. Amidst wild stunts and adrenalin-pumping shots, it's hard to balance what is essentially violence with the idea that this is supposed to be funny. Explosions and car crashes, ordinary people having to get quickly out of the way of pursuits, isn't quite like Moe Howard hitting Curly on the head with a hammer. The Stooges benefit from being ridiculous.
In Bird On a Wire, property damage fills numerous scenes. What does Rick's flight for his life do to the economic lives of those whose businesses are damaged? Who owns the motorcycle he steals, and how did the owner losing his or her motorbike deal with going outside to find his ride gone? Did this fuck up the owner's life?
I'm more interested in a movie that would deal with aftermaths rather than the crazy whirlwind ripping up society. The fleeing pair go to a place in the Wisconsin (Canadian) countryside run by a veterinarian played by the gorgeous Joan Severance. She used to employ Rick when he was in the Witness Protection Program. She extracts buckshot from his ass, exchanges dark looks with Marianne, and when the inevitable menace comes to get Rick in the form of a helicopter with two heavies hired by a rogue FBI agent who betrayed Rick's identity to the corrupt former DEA agents, property damage ensues, machine gun fire blasting buildings, endangering the numerous animals on the farm. Rick and Marianne steal the veterinarian's two-seat airplane and soon wreck it. We never get back to Joan Severance, whose livelihood and property have been slammed by human chaos.
The climax takes place in a zoo where Rick worked for a time. Animals are set loose upon the villains, one of the buildings is wrecked in the process with three corpses lying there to be found by the morning crew, I guess. Rick and Marianne sail away at the end on a boat he's named after his penis. How the two manage to not get arrested is their once in a lifetime miracle.
John Badham, the director, is a skilled action filmmaker. He can handle an action scene with the best of them. I've never thought him to be profound; rather, he's interesting as a slick maker of professional quality cinema. In recent years, he's gone over to television directing.
Bird On a Wire has the key problem of relying too much on the stardom of its two leads. A little less of Gibson and Hawn (although they're both appealing movie stars) and more David Carradine and Bill Duke would balance the film better. The latter two are inexplicably absent from a large piece of the movie. I wondered several times what they were doing while Goldie and Mel argued and made up, made up and argued.
The film misses more than it hits, with too many dumb moves by characters. On the other hand, it's an interesting piece of 1980s-style American action cinema that happened to come out in 1990. I suspect the film has entered semi-obscurity in the memories of moviegoers from that time.
Vic Neptune
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