Bird on a Wire (1990)

brilliant actors, brilliant editing

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Continuing my plan to watch every Mel Gibson movie in order, I come to 1990's Bird On A Wire.Plot In A Paragraph: Rick (Gibson) helped convict a drug-dealing FBI agent, and was placed in the witness protection program. Fifteen years later his former fiancée Marianne (Goldie Hawn) crosses paths with him at a gas station, and before you know it, goons show up to kill him, and the two former lovers go on the run.Slated by critics upon release, I have a real soft spot for this movie. OK some of the things wouldn't fly today (Gibson's gay hairdresser for example) and Goldie Hawn has been remaking the same movie over and over since Foul Play. But I do like it. Most of it is down to the two leads. The movie pretty much let's Gibson do his own thing, and he seemed to be having fun, but at times he does come off as a bit of a jerk!! At his best here, he is a bit of a watered down Riggs!! Hell his pose on the poster/DVD cover is almost identical to the one on Lethal Weapon 2. As for Hawn, she looked great!! I'm of the opinion that Goldie Hawn got more and more attractive as she got older, peaking in the Bird On A Wire and HouseSitter era. She handles all her action scenes, romantic scenes and comedy scenes wonderfully!! And man what an ass!! I love it.I also like John Badham as a director, he has directed more than a few movies that I love!!I'm of the opinion that it was solely the star power of Gibson (and of course Hawn) that made the movie a hit, as it grossed $70 million at the domestic box office to finish the year the 16th highest grossing movie of 1990!! A head of Rocky V, Godfather 3, Goodfells and Edward Scissorhands despite some truly awful reviews!! Including one that said "Bird On A Wire fails on every level"

Rick Jarmin is in the witness protection programme. When an old flame of his recognises him at his gas station work place, he is naturally concerned for his safety, and well he should be because the men he informed on, Albert Diggs and Eugene Sorenson, are hot on his tail. This sets up a sequence of events that lead to Rick and his former lover, Marianne Graves going on the run, with hilarious results.Tho released in 1990, Bird On A Wire positively oozes an 80s feel, from Mel Gibson's (Jarmin) hair to the way director John Badham films his action sequences, it feels 80s and really it probably should have been kept back there. For although this is not a bad film by any stretch of the imagination, in fact Gibson and Goldie Hawn (Graves) are a delightful duo, it just feels repetitive and never really gets to anywhere you wasn't expecting. That is mainly because the 80s (and early 90s) were full of these type of thrillers relying on guffaw set pieces to bring home the bacon, chances are that if you watched another five of these genre films from the same time frame you will be getting deja vu.Some laughs to be had here for sure, and there is nothing wrong with the bad guy portrayals on show, courtesy of Bill Duke and David Carradine, it's just now tired and showing its unimaginative age. 5/10

The title of this film does not have any direct reference to the action, but was borrowed from a Leonard Cohen song. (Cohen's title was actually "Bird on the Wire", not "a Wire"). Some have seen a parallel between Cohen's opening lines, "Like a bird on the wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free" and the antics of Mel Gibson's character, but I suspect that the real reason for the title was that the film-makers felt it was too good to waste on a mere song. Borrowing song-titles for films was popular at one time; another example is "Pretty Woman", which also came out in 1990.The film is one of a number that are ostensibly set in America but which were actually shot, presumably for financial reasons, in Canada. No doubt some Americans were baffled as to why Detroit looks so much like Vancouver and why an American shopping mall was displaying all those Canadian provincial flags.Marianne Graves is a lawyer from Detroit, Michigan, whose life is turned upside down when her former fiancé Rick Jarmin suddenly reappears in her life after a fifteen- year absence. It turns out that Rick was responsible for giving evidence which helped to convict a corrupt FBI agent named Eugene Sorenson and has spent the last fifteen years living under a false identity as part of the witness protection program. Rick and Marianne are forced to go on the run, trying desperately to stay one step ahead of the vindictive Sorenson, who has now been released from prison, and his accomplices.A film on this subject could have been made as a serious, Hitchcock-style, suspense movie, but in 1990 there was evidently still a feeling in Hollywood that Goldie Hawn didn't do serious, and "Bird on a Wire" was made as a light-hearted comedy thriller. Its plot has some similarity to another Hawn vehicle, "Seems Like Old Times" from ten years earlier, which deals with a woman whose life is turned upside-down by the reappearance of her ex-husband, on the run from the law. The film is, in fact, a pretty standard Goldie Hawn film and Marianne a standard Hawn character; although she is supposed to be a tough, high-flying lawyer Goldie simply plays her as the latest in her long line of lovable dizzy blondes, a line stretching back more than twenty years to "Cactus Flower" and "There's a Girl in My Soup".Goldie's previous film had been "Overboard", in which she was rather cast against type as an initially cold, haughty and unsympathetic character, but which proved to be one of her major successes. In "Bird on a Wire" she was reverting to type, but in her next two films, the thriller "Deceived" and the drama "Criss Cross", Hollywood finally accepted that Goldie could do serious.Mel Gibson is today, both as an actor and a director, mainly associated with serious films, but in the early nineties there was a lighter side to him, and "Bird on a Wire" is an example of this aspect of his work, if not the best. (That was probably "Maverick"). Gibson makes a likable hero, and combines together well with Hawn, while director John Badham comes up with some exciting action scenes. The film as a whole is an enjoyable if undemanding light thriller. 6/10

There's nothing much that's really new in this film but it is diverting at times, if only because there is so much going on -- and at such a tempo.Goldie Hawn is fluffy, feminine, and sexy. She wears her blond hair in a kind of lustrous mop with a lengthy cascade down her back. And, as usual, her slightly asymmetrical lips lend her a goofy appearance.Mel Gibson isn't bad either. In fact, his best scenes involve his being scared half to death. He shakes and stutters magnificently. But what is this thing with his butt? Alright, alright, the ladies seem to love it but do the rest of us have to suffer through Mel's exposure? Fifteen years ago, the rascally young Gibson character testified against some high-level drug dealers and was whisked off into a witness protection program, forcing him to leave Hawn at the altar. The gangsters are now out of the slams and they and their gang of goons are looking for Gibson. They've also framed him for a murder they committed, so the FBI is in on the case too.Gibson has had a dozen jobs over the years and is now working as a humble auto mechanic in Detroit. That's where he is when Hawn pulls into the station for some gas. She recognizes him. The thugs have been watching her too, and they attack the gas station, causing the first of several formulaic slow-motion exploding fireballs.The rest of the movie is one long interstate chase after another, with pauses at some of the places where Gibson has held previous jobs -- a farm, a hair dressing salon, a zoo -- that sort of thing.There are one or two of the expectable auto chases (one through a narrow alley in Detroit's Chinatown), a helicopter chasing after a crop-duster's airplane, two motorcycles, and a foot chase through an improbable natural history display full of man-eating tigers, alligators, lions, and piranhas.Neither Gibson nor Hawn shoot anybody. It's not that kind of movie. The bad guys are -- let me think -- killed in crashes of their own making, eaten by fish and lions, or electrocuted. Everyone runs around, shouting and shooting, or, in Goldie Hawn's case, screaming. It ends happily.The pace is headlong and reckless. The characters are exactly what you'd expect. There is an upskirt shot of Goldie Hawn's barenekkid behind, which is one of the nicer moments. The most memorable of these shots appears just before the couple climb in through the 14th-story window of a convention where a buffet is available. They stop for a moment to hurriedly munch some shrimp and trade wisecracks before scurrying off.I found it all pretty unimaginative or -- well, that's the wrong word. Rather, it's as if the writers had said, "Let's do a variation on a typical chase thriller, and let's try to make it different. How about if the final confrontation takes place in a zoo in Wisconsin? That's imaginative, isn't it? Does anybody know any jokes we can stick in?"They missed the scene where a bullet shatters the giant glass aquarium and the fish and octopii flood out onto the miscreants.