Ladyhawke

Ladyhawke is a medieval fantasy movie set in a twelfth century Italian province - one that has dark magic. The movie centers around Rutger Hauer and Michelle Pfeiffer as star-crossed lovers struggling with a curse. Young thief Matthew Broderick helps them in their quest to undo it.



This should be exactly the kind of movie I adore. It is set precisely in the medieval era I adore. It features sword fights - something I've studied and practiced for years. Broderick's character has delightful humor. I enjoy the fantasy element. So why do I have issues with this movie, and explicitly Richard Donner's directorial decisions, even though I've seen it a number of times?

First, clearly, is the music. I've seen nearly every medievally set movie on the market, and most fantasy movies as well. This is a genre I adore. Parson's music here has to be some of the worst matched music that exists. Sure, part of it is that Alan Parsons created a soundtrack far more thematically matched to Blade Runner (another Rutger Hauer classic) than to this era. But even with that aside, the soundtrack is just BAD. It's heavy handed and in some situations the mood doesn't match at all. You get the over-the-top cliche Jaws music. You get inappropriate music. It's simply not done by someone who understands movie scoring. And it's not just a "product of its era", either. Ladyhawke came out in 1985. Conan the Barbarian came out in 1982 and its soundtrack was STUNNING. Basil Poledouris created a tour de force which not only shines as a perfect moment-by-moment emotional echo of the scenes on the screen, but also is a powerhouse as a standalone work of art. So we go from Conan to THIS? Also from 1981 was Excalibur, with its rich, incredible soundtrack by Trevor Jones. Again, both movies were fantasies, set in medieval / past environments. These soundtracks were just perfect in so many ways. The sound that accompanies Ladyhawke greatly detracts from its message.

If there was any way for me to acquire a version of this movie WITHOUT any soundtrack at all, and play my own music instead in the background, I would absolutely do it. I've even considered watching it with subtitles, and no sound at all from the movie, to minimize the harm it causes. Donner has taken full "credit" for the musical choice because he was listening to Alan Parsons quite a lot while filming the movie and he loved the music. It's fine for him to love a style of music. It's not fine for him to then force that music into a movie environment where it just doesn't fit.

Next comes the costumes. Again, yes, I understand that sometimes costumes in movies are clearly MEANT to be costumes and not actual outfits. Look at the original Errol Flynn "Robin Hood" or the Richard Harris version of "Camelot". These were presented more as filmed plays than as action-adventure movies. You took one look at those costumes and realized they were meant to portray a "shiny clean" version of the scene, as if it was on a set. And that was all right. That way their style.



But in Ladyhawke, the style is one of gritty reality. Take a look at the scene where the poor peasants agree to let Rutger and his little group stay overnight. They are dirty and rough. Look at how the sword-fighting is styled to be harsh and challenging, rather than play-style combat. So with all of that, the costumes should have been authentic, hand-sewn, and "lived in" looking. Take a look at the Russell Crowe version of Robin Hood or Ironclad for a sense of what I mean. Outfits that seem like real people wore them. Instead, here we get shiny, almost polyester looking outfits that came right off a trailer's rack. Pressed. Dry-cleaned. Made of bizarre materials! Yes, I realize this is a fantasy, but it's set like Conan to be a fantasy in a "real world" that lives and breathes. Here we're in 12th century Italy. We're not on a polished-wood play set in a high school auditorium. The costume choices continually draw us out of that environment, rather than immerse us into it. And, beyond that, they aren't even proper to the chosen setting. This clearly was Donner's stylistic decision, and it just doesn't fit.

Next, bizarrely to me, comes the swordfighting. The swordmaster in Ladyhawke was William Hobbes, who I adored in Excalibur, and he also handled several other movies including Willow, Rob Roy, the Bergin Robin Hood, Hamlet, and more. I love many of his other swordfights. Hobbes clearly knows his stuff. So I squarely place the blame (again) in Donner's lap. He must have said "I want them to be clumsy and rough, to give us a raw feel." But the result is that it looks incredibly silly. It's as if this Captain of the Guard, a man at the top of his form, a man who could hold off entire groups of talented soldiers on his own, could be exhausted in just a few blows. And even there, the fight isn't done well. It's like they're randomly hacking at each other. This man wouldn't have lasted five minutes in a battle with the characters from many of Hobbes' other films.

Also, very strangely, Rutger Hauer is wielding a sword extremely similar to a Zweihänder - a German longsword used by mercenaries in the 1400s - 1500s. I say strangely, because this is the exact sword Rutger wielded in Flesh and Blood, the film he was in from earlier in 1985. Of course, in Flesh and Blood Hauer WAS a mercenary in that time frame, so his use of the sword made perfect sense. Here, in Italy in the 1100s, it makes zero sense. Again, the director just picked and chose things he wanted and stuck them in.



The plot is a fantasy, and I do like the wolf-by-night, hawk-by-day aspect of it. I like the interplay of the characters and the progression. But there are moments where a twist in the plot feels incredibly contrived and forced there for "need to move the story in this direction" reasons rather than actual storyline reasons. Moment 1 - when the hawk is wounded and Hauer hands his near-death true love over to a known-to-be-inconsistent thief to get her to safety. Yes, you could say that Hauer was going to turn into a wolf later on and a wolf carrying a hawk probably results in hawk dinner. However, Hauer knows where the monastery is, and he knows how far it is. He is a FAR better horseman than Broderick is. And even at Broderick's lackadaisical pace, he makes it to the monastery well in advance of nightfall! The monk has time to meander around and find some herbs before he can even begin to work. So absolutely Hauer COULD have raced his true love there, helped with the preparations, and then waited outside the walls as a wolf while the work was done on her. He could have ensured she safely got to her destination. Instead, he just hands her away to someone he can't really trust. Not the action of a hero, in my mind. They could have come up with a far more realistic plot reason that he couldn't go.

Second, which is far worse in my mind, is near the end where Hauer finally decides to do something. I say "finally" because apparently he's spent the past two years doing nothing at all. He could have been pressuring the Bishop to remove the curse. He could have been researching ways to end the curse. Heck, he could have been studying how to read and write so he and his lady love could write each other letters every day and communicate that way. But no, he simply wanders around for two years and then at the very end decides to kill the Bishop out of revenge. Now, this isn't the bad part. I could at least accept revenge as a silly but understandable action. No, what bothers me is that Hauer decides that, should he fail, that his TRUE LOVE SHOULD BE SLAUGHTERED because of course she wouldn't want to live a day without him. What??? He doesn't ask her. He just assumes that she'd rather be dead than live in a world without him in it. Maybe she'd be happy in a nunnery, writing songs! Maybe she'd be happy healing the sick. There are a myriad of things she might prefer to having her neck snapped without being asked. And what makes this even worse in my mind is apparently lots of viewers find this "sweet and romantic". What?? And I suppose it was sweet and romantic when, in Hauer's previous film, Flesh and Blood, he did the exact same thing. When Hauer's character in Flesh and Blood thinks a rescuer might come in and save his blonde girlfriend, he decides to suffocate her to death rather than have her live with another guy. Romantic? Sweet? How about psychopathic? Is this the kind of male "hero" we want to idolize? And why do so many viewers watch it and cheer him along?

So, lots of issues here. Again I point the blame squarely at the director. The musical team is phenomenal - just not suited at all for this task. The swordmaster is amazing - but he was instructed in a bizarre fashion. The costume designers made gorgeous costumes - they're just ridiculous in this setting. The plot has enormous issues.

Even if you said "this is a cool movie for kids" - do we want to be teaching kids that a hero plans on snapping the neck of his heroine if he runs into a problem, and this is great? That he abandons her to a random stranger if he runs into trouble? That, when faced with a challenge, he just rides randomly around for two years and then decides on slaughtering someone out of revenge rather than seeking a solution?

There was so much which could have been amazing about this film. I greatly wanted it to succeed. But the director made a series of poor choices, and the entire project suffered as a result.

Rating: 3/5.

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