Bird on a Wire (1990)

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

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.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

'Bird on a Wire' is Good Time-Pass. Its Fast-Paced, Crisply Written & Nicely Acted. It surely can be watched once.'Bird on a Wire' Synopsis: A FBI informant has kept his new identity secret for 15 years, now an old flame has recognized him and the bad guys are back for revenge.'Bird on a Wire' begins & ends well. It packs in enough entertainment in those 100 odd minutes. Louis Venosta & David Seltzer's Screenplay is Crispy & Fast-Paced. John Badham's Direction is passable. Cinematography & Editing are fair. Action-Sequences are well-done.Performance-Wise: Mel Gibson & Goldie Hawn are in superb form. Its truly a pleasure to watch 2 legendary performers deliver such cheerful & memorable performances. David Carradine is excellent as the bad-guy. Others fill the bill.On the whole, 'Bird on a Wire' is Time-Pass.

I remember that this movie hit the cinemas when I was about 17 so it is about ten years old. I never saw it though I remember that a couple of so called friends got me to lend me money to see it though I ended up not going with them. This is why this movie sticks in my mind. It wasn't really something that I wanted to see and now that I have watched it, I don't really think that it is really that much of a movie. When it was in the cinemas, the Greater Union cinema on Hindley Street was in two buildings, one on each side of the street. One must think that this movie isn't all that good because I am talking about the layout of Adelaide at the time that it was in the cinemas. The movie was average, it is just this is what the movie brings back to me.Goldie Hawn is an interesting actor, interesting that I don't actually think that she really suits many of the roles that she is cast it. Hawn is simply just too innocent. She seems to be a lot like my friend Mellissa, she is sweet looking and not really suitable for a woman who has been through divorces and bad husbands. If only she could act and even look more cynical and disillusioned she might suit the roles that she is cast in (okay I am talking about Foul Play and this movie). The role is not all that bad because the character is supposed to be sweet and innocent, dragged into the action that is beyond her, but her background just doesn't reflect the character. I would have had Hawn's character still sweet and innocent, and still mourning for the lover that she lost so long ago. Maybe she could be married but a divorce is just too messy and too emotionally destructive to create a sweet and innocent character.Bird on a Wire, that title just didn't really make much sense to me. That is probably why I thought the movie was simply average. Sure there were stunts, machine guns, explosions, but the title simply did not capture the essence of the movie. It was also a chase movie, where a couple are chased across America by evil government officials, which is reasonably clichéd. I think to make a good movie now we need to fall into the area in which our music is drifting: we need to turn away from the happy fantasy to the hopeless, empty, and bleak existence that life is. Homer Simpson says to the Smashing Pumpkins, "I thank you for your bleak music for you have stopped my children dreaming of a future I simply cannot provide." Our music is tearing down the fantasy world that we have put up before us, and I feel that this is where our movies need to go.Well, I have talked about this, and we must remember the time of the movie. Bird on a Wire was late eighties and the bleak world view was only just forming. Nirvana had appeared in the early nineties, about two to three years after this. Metallica had released And Justice For All, and Iron Maiden were singing Ballards while Guns and Roses were hard rock. This was a time that the world was beginning to collapse but the dream that was the eighties was still flowing. I was employed as an electronic technician and things were nice. It was a time when movies of hope and innocence existed, yet they still do, though I must see Armageddon to really see how movies of hope exist, while movies like City of Angels seem to suggest having to give something up to love.I still haven't talked about what Bird on a Wire entails, but I guess it is not really all that important. Simply it is a chase movie. A young man, Rick, flew over to Mexico to buy some cheap drugs but was caught by corrupt DEA officials who forced him to smuggle drugs back into the States only to get caught at a private airstrip. He testified and was put on witness protection but the DEA officer was recently released and is now after him. At the same time his ex-girlfriend, the one he left standing at the altar, sees him in Detroit and this thrusts them together. It is interesting but rather plain. I had more fun sorting out my photos.

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.

Not only is this a been there before comedy, it definitely gives one the feeling of 'de-ja-vu' (does that sound familiar to you?). Mel Gibson's character seems very derivative of his psycho-cop 'Martin Riggs' in the "Lethal Weapon" series, while several action sequences in the movie conjure up memories of earlier, better films such as "Running Scared" and "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom".For all the work that went into the storyline (three writers David Seltzer, Eric Lerner and Louis Venosta all contributed) it is not at all interesting. The only thing that helps the movie out is the comedy, which works fairly well from time to time. Rather disappointing from director John Badham.Sunday, August 30, 1992 - Video