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Bird on a Wire

Bird on a Wire

Comedy · Romance · Adventure · 1990

An FBI informant has kept his new identity secret for 15 years. Now an old flame has recognised him, and the bad guys are back for revenge.

Movie details

Bird on a Wire

“He’s every woman’s dream and one woman’s nightmare.”

1990 Comedy · Romance · Adventure 1h 50m

Critical arithmetic

The consensus, allegedly.

IMDb

6.0 / 10

48.7K votes

Rotten Tomatoes

26 %

Tomatometer

Metacritic

36 / 100

Metascore

TMDB

6.2 / 10

Community rating

External scores via OMDb · CC BY-NC 4.0. Values normalized for display; availability varies by title.

An FBI informant has kept his new identity secret for 15 years. Now an old flame has recognised him, and the bad guys are back for revenge.

CriticWise case file

What this film says about your taste.

Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.

The archetype split

Who fights over Bird on a Wire?

The split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.

Taste neighbourhood

Nearby on the taste map.

TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.

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Where it lives

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Streaming availability data supplied by JustWatch.

Names above the title

The people responsible.

Directed by

John Badham

Written by

David Seltzer · Louis Venosta · Eric Lerner

Mel Gibson

Mel Gibson

Richard 'Rick' Jarmin

Goldie Hawn

Goldie Hawn

Marianne Graves

David Carradine

David Carradine

Eugene Sorensen

Bill Duke

Bill Duke

Albert Diggs

Stephen Tobolowsky

Stephen Tobolowsky

Joe Weyburn

Joan Severance

Joan Severance

Rachel Varney

Harry Caesar

Harry Caesar

Marvin Larson

Court is in session

Put Bird on a Wire on trial.

Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.

The defence The Popcorn Loyalist

“Sincerity is not manipulation.”

The film risks embarrassment to make emotion communal, and that openness is harder than fashionable detachment.

The prosecution The Cool Ironist

“The strings are showing.”

Every cue tells you exactly what to feel and when, leaving sentiment to do the work character should have done.