9. Hudson Hawk (1991)
In 1991 Bruce Willis was Hollywood's biggest action star following the box office juggernauts Die Hard and Die Hard 2. The previous year he'd starred in The Bonfire Of The Vanities which had crashed and burned at the box office. Brian De Palma's adaptation of the Tom Wolfe novel was positioned as a comedy, so normal Willisness would be resumed once he got back to his usual action movie duties. Hudson Hawk, directed by Michael Lehman who had delivered the deliciously dark Heathers in 1988, had the reassuring tag line "Catch The Adventure, Catch The Excitement, Catch The Hawk". However, what greeted the audience was an outrageous spoof of an action movie, with every detail dialled up to a hysterically shrieking 11. Imagine a Bob Hope and Bing Crosby road movie colliding with a James Bond flick. It's that good. Anyone can place the hero at the scene of a robbery, but it takes a genius to punctuate that robbery with a show tune or to have the female lead, Andie MacDowell, spend a good portion of the movie impersonating a dolphin. Its genuinely funny, an absurdist caper movie, with Richard E Grant and Sandra Bernhard vying for the title of campest villain of all time. Danny Aiello and James Coburn are eminently watchable, as always. None of which anybody expected, and as a result people stayed away in their droves. Even given his Hollywood title as the Smirkmaster General rarely has Mr Willis smirked so much, or looked as smug as he does in this movie, and rightly so, it's brilliant. Knowing one-liner after knowing one-liner (head on over to imdb and check out the very quotable quotes) batter you into submission until you love John McClane even more. I went to see GI Joe: Retaliation at the weekend and it was quite, quite awful, but Bruce Willis gave a couple of half-grins which reminded me of Hudson Hawk and all was right with the world.