Bullet Points: Bird on a Wire

I missed the 30th anniversary of Lethal Weapon but that doesn’t mean I can’t review one of my favorite Mel Gibson movies that doesn’t feature a wicked car chase or him slicing British soldiers to bits like a fresh out of the box Mercer Culinary Carving Knife. This one features the womb that created Kate Hudson and multiple viewings of Gibson’s rear end. Cue up the Oscar music now!

Synopsis: A wealthy woman finds her ex-flame is an FBI informant who is on the run from a couple of really tough guys with bad intentions. She gets wrapped up in both him and his dangerous situation.

• Cain: Just watching a shirtless David Carradine walking out of a prison shirtless is unsightly. Despite his many excellent film and television projects, Carradine has never been a physical specimen. That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t pair up with Bill Duke and make one of the most deadly teams this side of a Godzilla movie. I never get tired of hearing Bill Duke’s voice in a movie and bad guy Duke is one of my favorites of all time.

• Just Mel being Mel: Mel’s character is in witness protection from some stuff that we find out later had to do with drug running criminals (Carradine & Duke) and their desire to get back at him for his tattling on them. Mel is some sort of tree-hugging hippie who can’t stand that people have money that they’ve worked hard for. I guess he’d rather everyone just hang around the train station playing 3-stringed guitars and rolling their own cigarettes. Thankfully this is just Mel acting cause anti-Semite Mel is more likeable to me.
• On the Run: Mel and Goldie meet up and sparks start to fly. No, seriously. The bad guys appear and start shooting at them and eventually blow up the building they were in. The rest of the film is essentially Mel and Goldie trying to stay one step ahead of the dastardly duo long enough for Mel to find his former handler with the Witness Protection Agency. Why they didn’t just turn themselves into the police I’ll never know.

• Run even faster: You’ll feel like you’re watching one of those Iron Man competitions on ESPN2 during NFL season by the end of the movie. Mel and Goldie don’t just run, they also climb stuff, ride dirt bikes, and drive terrible trucks in order to make their way from one end of British Columbia to the other. The finale finally pits Mel against the bad guys in an amazing artistic but terribly inefficient looking zoo. It looks incredibly difficult but it gives us an opportunity to see a man get eaten by a random pool of piranhas.

If Mel can make entertaining movies for 45 years than you can read a few more Bullet Points:

• Goldie Hawn in a thong is my favorite Goldie Hawn. Now I know where Kate Hudson got those tight butt cheeks of hers.
• Although they’re supposed to be closer in age, Goldie and Mel were 11 years apart. I guess they still are. People don’t age at different rates, do they?
• The walls of the cages for the animals in the zoo were made of plaster so they had to be careful not to tempt the animals to tear through them and eat them.
• The children’s party at the beginning of the film features a number of armed guards standing around the compound wearing pig costumes. There is nothing more intimidating than seeing a group of pigs carrying submachine guns.