"Looks like you won't be attending that hat convention in July."

When I was eleven, and faced with another rainy childhood weekend on the west coast of Scotland, I happened upon something in the local general store - a video rental rack. Previously, our household VHS renting habits were restricted to three-a-week-for-a-fiver from the Video Van that parked up outside the station every Saturday. Great as Mr. VV was (he never batted an eyelid as I handed over cash for such age-restrictive titles as Total Recall and New Jack City), he lacked immediacy. And sat there on that rental rack of Loch Awe Stores was something I needed there and then in my life - "Hudson Hawk."

And so began an eighteen-year affair with what some people perceive as one of the worst movies of the twentieth century. I couldn't get enough of those snappy, sweary one-liners. I never ceased to marvel at that Swinging On A Star heist set-piece. And I found myself strangely attracted to Sandra Bernhard (which, to this day, is still a far more reasonable proposition than Andie McfuckingDowell). Bad feelings were frequently aimed in the film's direction, and I was always first to dive in front of those scathing word-bullets.

Late last night, after a weekend spent in forced isolation, I decided to switch off my tiny brain and succumb once again to the wonders of the '"Hawk." Imagine my abject horror 91 minutes later, upon discovering that - newsflash - "Hudson Hawk" is fucking terrible. Like, utterly catastrophically bad.

I'm sure this won't come as bombshell to most. The film's been dogged since production began, and it failed to recoup even a modicum of its overinflated budget. But as this weird, juddering vanity project unfolded before my eyes, I started to question if my ever-dedicated love had been some kind of mental fever dream. Even "Hudson Hawk"'s own mother couldn't love it, if it had a mother, which it doesn't, because it's a film.

Instead, it has conspirators. Chief of whom is a Mr. Bruce Willis. That smirk's a trademark, for sure - yet here it stops being a knowing smile and here turns into a full-blown Smuggest Cunt Of The Century tic. Bruce seems DEEPLY amused by what's unfolding on screen, in some kind of vague hope that you will be too. He rattles through the script (so desperate to please you that every line has to be either a joke, a pithy insult or outright nonsensical) with precisely zero effort, and it shows.

Danny Aiello - so fucking good in "Do The Right Thing" that he blows my mind every time I see that movie - looks simply baffled. I'm not even sure he knows he's in-shot for a good portion of the proceedings, as he just kinda grins aimlessly at Bruce and occasionally murders a tune. Bernhard and Richard E. Grant must be in competition for the Lamest Villains ever, committing little in the way of true dastardliness and instead just fannying about with their outdoor voices on at all times. The less said about James Coburn and his band of candy-named spooks (including, in a career highlight, David Caruso*), the better.

The whole thing unravels at lightning-quick speed, to the extent that I felt like I was missing set-ups for jokes throughout. Turns out I wasn't - it's just a good majority of the lines are completely non sequitur to begin with. Take the very headline of this blog, uttered by Willis after he lobs the nasty butler's bonce off - why would he have been attending that convention anyway? Why is it in July? And he still has a whole head (albeit one detatched from his body). Surely that joke only works if the top part of his head - the hat-bearing part, as I like to refer to it - was severed? It makes NO FUCKING SENSE. And yet somehow, it's synonymous with the rest of the movie.

It pains me a little to have to say this, but I'm divorcing you, "Hudson Hawk." The light that once shone brightly from you has been extinguished, and my love for you likewise. You are, quite frankly, shit.


*actually, Brad Anderson's "Session 9" is the highlight of his career. Fact.