Bird on a Wire (film)

Bird on a Wire is a 1990 American action comedy film directed by John Badham and starring Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn. Gibson portrays a man in the witness protection program who is unexpectedly reunited with his former girlfriend, played by Hawn, and both find themselves on the run. Critical reception was mixed, but the film was a box office hit.

Plot
Attorney Marianne "Muffie" Graves, unexpectedly crosses paths with her hippie ex-fiancé Rick Jarmin while in Detroit for a business deal. Jarmin is hiding under an assumed identify as part of the Witness Protection Program and claims to be another man. Marianne believed Jarmin died in a plane crash and discreetly follows him to confirm his true identity. She observes an attempt on his life by murderous drug-smuggling DEA agents Eugene Sorenson and Albert "Diggs" Diggins. Sorenson was released from prison after serving fifteen years due to Jarmin's testimony. She helps Rick go on the run.

Rick's old FBI handler has retired and the new one, FBI agent Joe Weyburn, is being blackmailed into colluding with Sorenson. Marianne angrily confronts Rick about his leaving her without warning fifteen years ago, but says he was worried about her safety. They reconcile and have sex.

Unwilling to trust local police or Weyburn, Rick wants to reach his old FBI handler Lou Baird in Wisconsin. Rick and Maryanne use contacts from his former life-in-hiding. He revisits a beauty salon where he was pretending to be an effeminate gay man and was the star hairdresser, and contacts old flame Rachel Varney, now a veterinarian, who helps Rick and Maryanne escape from a murderous hitman duo following them in a helicopter.

Reaching Baird's home, they learn he suffers from severe memory loss, doesn't remember Rick and can offer no help. 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.

Rick and Marianne are seen boating into the sunset in the Caribbean, having recovered from their injuries and planning their lives together.

Cast

 * Mel Gibson as Richard "Rick" Jarmin
 * Goldie Hawn as Marianne Graves
 * David Carradine as Eugene Sorenson
 * Bill Duke as Albert "Diggs" Diggins
 * Stephen Tobolowsky as Joe Weyburn
 * Joan Severance as Rachel Varney
 * Jeff Corey as Lou Baird

Production
Bird on a Wire was filmed mainly in British Columbia, Canada. The alley motorcycle chase scene was filmed in Victoria's Chinatown, in Fan Tan Alley.

The title refers to the Leonard Cohen song "Bird on the Wire", which is sung by Aaron Neville for the film.

Reception
Bird on a Wire gained a mixed to negative reception. According to Rotten Tomatoes, the film is "rotten" with only 25% of reviews from professional critics being positive.

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." 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." 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." 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. 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. 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." 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." 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." 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." 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." 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.

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.

Of 47 reviews that Variety considered in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington D.C., only one was favorable and 38 were unfavorable. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.

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