Bird on a Wire (film)

Last updated
Bird on a Wire
Bird on a wire poster.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed by John Badham
Written by
Produced by Rob Cohen
Starring
Cinematography Robert Primes
Edited by
Music by Hans Zimmer
Production
companies
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Release date
  • May 18, 1990 (1990-05-18)
Running time
110 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$20 million
Box office$138.7 million

Bird on a Wire is a 1990 American action comedy film directed by John Badham and starring Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn. It was shot mainly in British Columbia, Canada. [1] The title refers to the Leonard Cohen song "Bird on the Wire". The alley motorcycle chase scene was filmed in Victoria's Chinatown, in Fan Tan Alley.

Contents

Plot

Marianne "Muffie" Graves, a former hippie, is a successful lawyer completing a business deal in Detroit, Michigan. At a gas station, she crosses paths with a man that looks and sounds exactly like her hippie ex-fiancé Rick Jarmin, who disappeared in a plane crash 15 years previously and is presumed dead.

The man pretends to be a Vietnam War veteran and Marianne apologizes, says that Rick would never have served in that war, and then leaves. The terrified man then makes a call saying that he has been recognized and needs to be moved.

15 years earlier, Rick testified against murderous drug-smuggling DEA agent Eugene Sorenson and has been in the witness protection program ever since. Unfortunately, his old handler has retired and the new one, FBI agent Joe Weyburn, is being blackmailed into colluding with Sorenson. Promising to have Rick moved immediately, Weyburn leaks the gas station's address to Sorenson.

Meanwhile, Sorenson has been released on parole; his partner, Albert "Diggs" Diggins, picks him up and they set out to kill Rick for revenge and to smooth the passage of their new dealings with the Colombian drug cartels.

Marianne returns to confront Rick just as Diggs and Sorenson show up at the gas station with shotguns blazing. During the gunfight, Rick gets buckshot in his buttocks and his kindly old boss is killed. Marianne escapes with Rick, but Sorenson and Diggs pin the gas station owner's murder on Rick. They are forced to go on the run as Weyburn wipes out Rick's file and sends police to catch them.

To clear their names, Rick needs to reach his old handler. They use contacts from his former life-in-hiding, including at a beauty salon where he was pretending to be an effeminate gay man and was the star hairdresser, and an old flame, a veterinarian who removes the buckshot.

During a night spent in a hotel room, Rick tells Marianne everything that happened 15 years ago. They share their feelings and have passionate sex.

Reaching the home of his old handler, they find out he has Alzheimer's and thus doesn't remember Rick. Sorenson, Diggs and Weyburn show up, so Rick and Marianne retreat to a nearby zoo where Rick once worked. He releases animals from their cages to assist in their defense, and Diggs is mauled to death by a lion, while Weyburn is eaten by piranhas.

Sorenson winds up electrocuted. Wounded, Rick winds up suspended over a tiger in a cage, requiring Marianne to save him. When she is not quite able to reach him, he offers her the extra incentive of marriage and children, which does the trick. They are then seen boating into the sunset in the Caribbean.

Cast

Reception

Bird on a Wire gained a mixed to negative reception. A review in Variety called it "an overproduced, tedious road movie" and wrote that "Frank Capra's It Happened One Night established the format, but John Badham is stuck with a terrible script on this 1990s version. Only the chemistry of Goldie Hawn and Mel Gibson makes the film watchable." [2] Desson Howe of The Washington Post wrote his review of the film in the style of an autopsy, opening it by saying "The Names: Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn. The Movie: "Bird on a Wire". The Reason: Information currently unavailable." [3] Owen Gleiberman gave the film a D grade in Entertainment Weekly , where he wrote that "even in an era of paint-by-numbers moviemaking, director John Badham ( Saturday Night Fever , Stakeout ) has pulled off a feat: He has made a film that's 100 percent generic. It should have been called ROMANTIC ACTION COMEDY." [4] Roger Ebert gave the film a two-and-a-half-star rating out of four, writing:

My guess is they screened a lot of Hitchcock movies before they made "Bird on a Wire", and the parts they liked the best were where Hitch placed his couples in situations that were dangerous and picturesque at the same time; scenes like the Mt. Rushmore climax in "North by Northwest". That was a delicate balancing act when Hitchcock did it; the locations, sensational as they were, couldn't be allowed to upstage the thrills. In "Bird on a Wire", the act loses its balance. [5]

Gene Siskel, his colleague, reacted more harshly toward the film, calling it "a comic love story packed with more mindless action than any meaningful contact between the principals", and adding:

The project is so wrong-headed that one despairs for Gibson's once-serious film career. Hawn has been a lost soul for years, still trading on her cutesy laugh, which is no longer funny. [6]

Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that "Bird on a Wire fits a simple equation: you will like it in exact proportion to how willing you are to be charmed by Mel Gibson or Goldie Hawn. And that is definitely an either/or proposition. For while each of them is seriously cute here, together they generate less heat than Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin did in Midnight Run , the on-the-lam movie that this one most resembles." [7] Kathleen Carroll of the New York Daily News wrote that "Gibson and Hawn are not the perfect screen love match. They look cute together. But they generate a minimal amount of electricity in what is little more than a fly-by-night action movie." [8] Peter Rainer of the Los Angeles Times called it "both frenetic and witless--a bad combination. It's the sort of action-comedy vehicle that stands a chance of succeeding only if the star chemistry is strong enough to compensate for all the uninspired calisthenic derring-do. Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn can't cultivate their chemistry because their characters are too busy dodging bullets and scampering away from the bad guys. They're moving-target gagsters in a techno-pop shooting gallery." [9] Carrie Richey of The Philadelphia Inquirer said that "Badham is more intrigued with the mechanics of his film's various vehicles than he is with the mechanics of its script. As a result, the machines purr and the plot clunks." [10] Gary Thompson of the Philadelphia Daily News called the film "one of those awful studio concept pictures that seeks to blend the elements of two popular movies in hopes of creating one super-popular movie. The result, however, is another tiresome road picture with two megastars who fail to generate anything resembling screen chemistry. Sparks eventually fly, but only when a guy gets electrocuted at the end. The movie's main distinguishing feature, or features, are the respective bums of Hawn and Gibson. The miracle of Bird on a Wire is that such established stars are so often willing to exploit themselves with the kind of cheesecake and beefcake shots normally reserved for Playboy videos." [11] Michael H. Price of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram said that "clearly, there is nothing cheap or cheesy about Bird on a Wire, and yet the film feels significantly less than the sum of its parts. Goldie Hawn is much of the problem—her overfamiliar tough-kittenish approach feels more forced with every movie—and so are recycled story elements. [12] Henry Mietkiewicz in the Toronto Star wrote:

Walk into certain supermarkets and you'll find a slew of bland, no-frills products in austere packages at bargain prices.

As yet, no one has considered promoting movies that way, nor are they likely to.

But if ever a film deserved to be hawked via a poster with the word "Movie" in big, block letters on a stark, white background, it's Bird On A Wire.

Along the bottom, you'd also find the following notice, in smaller bold-face type: "Action-romance. Contains two stars, gunfire, explosions, three chases, one doublecross, 1960s nostalgia, romantic banter, one bedroom scene and one climactic showdown."

Who would have imagined that Goldie Hawn, without a hit for 10 long years since Private Benjamin, would choose director John Badham's noisy, vacuous vehicle for her comeback attempt?

Teaming with Mel Gibson was a sensible move for commercial reasons. Even the difference in their ages - she's 44, he's 34 - doesn't noticeably upset the romantic chemistry.

But after working so hard in the late '70s and early '80s to create the impression that her giggly exterior hid a shrewd mind, Hawn has now accepted a role as little more than a dizzy damsel in distress. [13]

Of 47 reviews that Variety considered in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington D.C., only one was favorable and 38 were unfavorable. [14] [15] On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes , 25% of 24 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4.1/10. [16] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale. [17]

Box office

Bird on a Wire debuted at number 1 at the US box office with an opening weekend gross of $15.3 million [18] and went on to gross over $138.6 million worldwide against a $20 million budget. It is considered a box office success.

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References

  1. ↑ Thompson-Nicola Film Commission Archived 2007-07-07 at the Wayback Machine
  2. ↑ Lor. (May 16, 1990). "Film Reviews: Bird on a Wire". Variety . p. 26. Retrieved 2010-11-16.
  3. ↑ "Bird on a Wire". The Washington Post . 1990-05-18. Retrieved 2010-11-16.
  4. ↑ "Bird on a Wire". Entertainment Weekly . 1990-05-18. Archived from the original on 2010-01-09. Retrieved 2010-11-16.
  5. ↑ "Bird on a Wire". Chicago Sun Times . Archived from the original on 2012-10-10. Retrieved 2010-11-16.
  6. ↑ Siskel, Gene (May 18, 1990). "'BIRD ON A WIRE' A TURKEY, NOT AN EAGLE". Chicago Tribune . Retrieved December 13, 2023.
  7. ↑ Maslin, Janet (May 18, 1990). "Review/Film; Four Eyes of Blue and an Old Love Rediscovered". The New York Times . Retrieved December 13, 2023.
  8. ↑ Carroll, Kathleen (May 18, 1990). "Mel, Goldie can't make 'Bird on a Wire' fly". Daily News . New York, New York. Retrieved December 13, 2023.
  9. ↑ Rainer, Peter (May 18, 1990). "'Bird on Wire': A Hawn, Gibson Balancing Act". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved December 13, 2023.
  10. ↑ Richey, Carrie (1990-05-18). "Mel Gibson, Goldie Hawn in a comic caper, 'Bird on a Wire'". The Philadelphia Inquirer . Retrieved 2023-12-13.
  11. ↑ Thompson, Gary (May 18, 1990). "Birdbrained Idea for Gibson & Hawn". Philadelphia Daily News . Retrieved December 13, 2023.
  12. ↑ Price, Michael H. (May 18, 1990). "Can't be called original, but fun to watch". Fort Worth Star-Telegram . Retrieved December 13, 2023.
  13. ↑ Mietkiewicz, Henry (May 18, 1990). "Generic action flick has Goldie playing Gibson's no-name lover". Toronto Star . Retrieved December 13, 2023.
  14. ↑ "Critics Opinions". Variety . May 23, 1990. pp. 28–30.
  15. ↑ "L.A. Critics Opinions". Variety . May 23, 1990. p. 67.
  16. ↑ "Bird on a Wire". Rotten Tomatoes . Fandango Media . Retrieved 2023-12-13. OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  17. ↑ "CinemaScore". cinemascore.com.
  18. ↑ "Bird on a Wire".
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