Ladyhawke (1985)
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Ladyhawke Movie Review
Ladyhawke is a 1985 historical fantasy romance film directed by Richard Donner and starring Matthew Broderick, Rutger Hauer and Michelle Pfeiffer. It is a highly flawed, but solid flick.
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“Sir, the truth is, I talk to God all the time,
and, no offense, but He never mentioned you“
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It is about a doomed romance where a man becomes a wolf at night and a woman becomes a hawk during day and thus they are constantly apart as humans. I actually love its concept which was for the time very original and it still remains intriguing and fun. The execution of said premise isn’t great, but for the most part the film worked and some scenes are excellent with the highlight being that sequence where the two see each other for a short time during dawn. That was incredibly romantic and poetic and I wish more scenes were like that.
But the movie unfortunately did not focus on its romance enough and it needed more scenes during the night as the day scenes took too much of the screen time. Some scenes are very silly and unrealistic and the first act was somewhat slow. The second act is excellent and easily the highlight, but the third one is overlong and the sword fights were unrealistic and unnecessary.
The character development is quite solid. Philippe Gaston is your typical Matthew Broderick 80s protagonist and he is definitely overly modern for this type of film. But still he is mostly likable and he did interact very well with the others.
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Rutger Hauer did not give a convincing performance, but I liked his character quite a bit. The same goes for Michelle Pfeiffer. The villains are forgettable, but Imperius stole the show as the funniest and most memorable character in the film. As for the animals, I loved the hawk and the wolf looked very cool and majestic.
Ladyhawke is technically problematic. On the one hand, the cinematography is fantastic and the castles, clothes and everything else looks very convincing in recreating the period of the Middle Ages. Visually speaking, the film is excellent and even its effects are sparingly used and solid for its time.
But in terms of audio, Ladyhawke fails miserably. The movie features such terrible soundtrack that it takes you out of its period completely. It has an odd 70s disco and 80s contemporary music and thus it doesn’t accompany its medieval scenes well at all and is even distracting as it’s way too loud. It is the biggest flaw in the film undoubtedly.
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But otherwise I liked the film. It is slowly paced and unnecessarily long, but it has its charm and its story is particularly moving and cinematic. It has an epic tone to it and some scenes are highly memorable. It could have been much better, but is perfectly solid nonetheless.
Ladyhawke has a winning premise and some very moving, cinematic scenes. The tone is epic, the cinematography is very strong and its characters are very likable across the board. The film is definitely charming and perfectly solid, but it’s undone by its slow pace, excessive length and such a horrible soundtrack that is distractingly loud and contemporary.
