Nighthawks (1981)

Simply A Masterpiece

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

New York City detectives Sylvester Stallone and Billy Dee Williams track down terrorist Rutger Hauer, who has come to the States from Paris after bombing a London department store. Grim, chilling urban thriller with a tight pace from director Bruce Malmuth (an eleventh-hour substitute after Disney-vet Gary Nelson was let go). The script by David Shaber actually began its life as the third "French Connection" film, but was rewritten after Gene Hackman took a pass. Stallone gives a solid performance, arguably his finest screen work away from the boxing ring. The violent scenario spares us none of the horrors of crime in the big city, yet the final 'surprise' scare is right off the Hollywood assembly line (maybe it seemed more fresh in 1981 than it does today). Lindsay Wagner is lovely yet stuck in the proverbial (and thankless) ex-wife role. Otherwise, it's a tense genre effort, one that was surprisingly underrated by critics and overlooked by moviegoers at the time of its release. **1/2 from ****

Nighthawks finds both Sylvester Stallone and Billy Dee Williams cast as a pair of undercover street cops who are picked for an anti- terrorism task force much against their will. It's a task force put together by Interpol and it's target is Rutger Hauer an international terrorist who has found Europe to hot for him and has fled to America with his associate Persis Khambatta.Hauer is really something to see, a stone cold killer who disguises his taste for sick violence by making himself an appointed liberator of the downtrodden people. The film actually opens with him bombing an English department store saying he was protesting British colonialism. By 1981 the British had divested themselves pretty much of their colonies, but Hauer needed an excuse.The finale takes place as Hauer and Khambatta take hostages aboard a Roosevelt Island shuttle tram car. It's nicely staged and the climax worth it. Some of Stallone's undercover skills are employed.Nighhawks is a good action thriller, Stallone fans will be pleased.

Stallone is no slouch in "Nighthawks", but even I'll admit that part of the movie's appeal is watching him be upstaged by Rutger Hauer. That guy's all sorts of menacing. Even so, the two men are what make this movie really work, bringing international terrorism head to head with gritty cop drama. This makes good use of New York locations to that end, and it's kinda like Stallone's "The French Connection". It's a surprisingly entertaining movie, still packs a punch, and the tense tram standoff in the third act keeps the blood pumping 'til the very end.8/10

This would be a routine action film, except for the way women function rather perversely in this movie. Sylvester Stallone, who plays a cop, has two women in his life. The first is his ex-wife. The second is Stallone himself, when he dresses up like a woman in order to lure muggers to attack him. It is pretty funny watching him chase a bad guy while wearing a dress.Rutger Hauer plays a terrorist who has a female accomplice. In the opening scene, set in England, he compliments a woman selling perfume in a department store while he slips a bomb under the counter, blowing up her and lots of others moments later. Then he comes to New York and picks up a woman in a bar to shack up with while he plots his next attack. When she discovers what he is, he kills her, which is ironic, since he jokingly referred to himself as a lady killer earlier. Then he takes a bunch of hostages on a tram, killing one woman and dropping her body into the river just to show he means business.When Stallone foils this plot, Hauer decides to get even by killing Stallone's ex-wife. He slips into her apartment while she is washing the dishes. He pulls out his knife and sneaks into the kitchen behind her. Then, just when he is about to stab her, she turns around and we see that it is not her after all. It is Stallone in drag again, and he puts a couple of rounds into one stunned and bewildered terrorist.