With Mel Gibson
and Goldie Hawn in the lead roles, this movie was a box office hit in 1990—and
that’s all it was back then.
Bird on a Wire lacked the excitement needed to keep you glued from start
to finish. The whole idea of a shady FBI office having the ability to do so
much damage to a witness protection program was just too flimsy. I don’t know
much about witness protection, but if someone’s life can be ruined because the
lead office had dementia, what kind of system are they running at the FBI?
Add to that the chase scenes, where the bad guys always seem to have a heads-up
on the location of our getaway pair, which was way too convenient to the point
of being annoying.
The acting by
the supporting cast seemed lackadaisical, and even the two leads appeared to
handle the life-threatening situations a little too casually. The best person
for a witness protection program is our lead, Rick (Mel Gibson). As we see
throughout the movie, he’s a jack of all trades in the places he worked under
the program. In fact, he was so good at his jobs that none of them wanted him
to leave—he was the best they’d ever had. What a coincidence.
The movie is
about a man who was set to be married fifteen years ago when he was sucked into
the witness protection program, leaving his fiancée at the altar.
Now, she (Marianne – Goldie Hawn) has moved on with her life, believing he was
dead, and has become a high-flying lawyer.
While handling a client in another city, she pulls into a gas station, and
there he is—the man who left her at the altar. She confronts him, but he denies
it, and with his slightly changed appearance, it seems easy for her to believe
him. Although, the before-and-after pictures of himself are just different by a
shave.
Around the same
time, the man Rick testified against gets out on parole. He calls his contact
in the FBI, who doesn’t know where Rick is, but by coincidence, Rick calls the
FBI office at around the same time. After Marianne sees him, he calls to be
relocated, and the corrupt agent happens to be the one who gets the call
transfer. He tells Rick that the officer in charge at the Bureau has retired
and that he’s now handling the case. He gets Rick’s current location and sends
the bad guys after him.
They show up at the same time Marianne returns to confront Rick again,
insisting she wasn’t lying and that he is who she thinks he is. Some guns go
off, and now both of them are on the run together.
The amount of
coincidence required for this movie to kick off the chase was way too much to
just enjoy it. Skip this one.
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