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
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