A Retrospective Review
By Cesare Augusto Directed by: Bruce Malmuth Starring: Sgt. Deke DaSilva – SYLVESTER STALLONE Wulfgar – RUTGER HAUER Sgt Matthew Fox – BILLY DEE WILLIAMS Peter Hartman – NIGEL DAVENPORT Shakka Holland – PERSIS KHAMBATTA Irene – LINDSEY WAGNER Lt. Munafo – JOE SPINELL For some, Nighthawks may feel like a cinematic anomaly. This thriller from 1981 combines so many similar genres together, that it’s almost as if its filmmakers couldn’t decide what type of category their product belonged to. Part buddy-cop action flick, part vintage terrorism thriller a la Day of the Jackal, and part gritty detective procedural from the Philip D’Antoni catalogue (i.e. Bullitt, The French Connection and The Seven-Ups), Nighthawks looks like an overwhelming cluster-fuck of ideas. But before you get discombobulated, don’t. Because Nighthawks offers a roller coaster of a thriller so entertaining, it’ll help you forgive and forget any possible discombobulation, thanks to some great performances and copious amounts of pulse-pounding suspense. The film stars Sylvester Stallone as streetwise veteran New York street cop Deke DaSilva. Up-and-coming international superstar Rutger Hauer costars as Wulfgar, the world’s deadliest terrorist. Judging from its poster, where the faces of both leads are tightly super-imposed adjacent to each other with the barrel of a pistol in between them, Nighthawks promotes the classic cat-and-mouse style thriller, and boy, do Stallone and Hauer help contribute to that! But more on that later, I promise. Providing equally effective supporting performances are Billy Dee Williams (as Deke’s fearless partner Matt Fox), Persis Khambatta, Joe Spinell, Lindsey Wagner, and Nigel Davenport. The presence of such fine late 70s/early 80s-eras character actors helps give the film’s sense of gritty, old-school urban appeal, ultimately telling audiences, “Hey, this is how we filmed action movies in our day, with familiar faces you recognize but names you probably can’t remember off-hand.” Sly and Billy Dee’s characters are undercover members of the NYPD’s “Decoy Squad,” specializing in catching crooks in the act of committing robberies while in disguise (action fans are sure to chuckle at Stallone dressed in full drag while dispatching with a thug in typical violent Stallone style). Meanwhile in London, we see Wulfgar, all charming and chic in his neat beard, nonchalantly plants a bomb in a posh department store and subsequently blows the place to smithereens. Wulfgar arrogantly reports his latest attack to the press via payphone, adding the chilling warning of “there is no security.” These introductory scenes brilliantly intertwines the breakneck cop scenes with Wulfgar’s dirty work. DaSilva and Fox are the strong arms of New York’s law, with high arrest records and longevity with the Decoy Squad, while Wulfgar is a walking instrument of death who leaves trails of blood all over Europe. The individual reputations of the cops and their terrorist prey are slowly and expertly laid out before us, and we son become more than convinced of what these men are truly made of. With a new surgically-reconstructed face, Wulfgar discreetly penetrates the United States by way of the Big Apple. Dogging his trail is tenacious British counter-terrorism expert Hartman (Davenport), who correctly surmises that Wulfgar chose New York as his new hunting grounds due to the city’s major news media outlets. To strengthen efforts to capture or kill Wulfgar, Hartman creates a counter-terrorism task force called ATAC (Anti-Terrorist Action Command), with Deke and Fox as its newest recruits. Another great intertwining juxtaposition of scenes between the film’s heroes and its villain commences. Wulfgar navigates all over Manhattan with very little apparent effort. He slyly cases the UN building and Roosevelt Island Tram system. He even finds the time for a little female companionship while exploring the glitzy New York nightlife. Wulfgar appears be enjoy his work, a total polar opposite to what our cops are forced to endure. As part of their new criminal profiling “training,” Deke and Fox are to be “indoctrinated in counter-terrorist tactics and techniques.” Their new instructor, Hartman, insists that the most effective way to nail Wulfgar is to get inside his head. Hartman also demands his counter-terrorism trainees to open fire upon sighting their prey. The pragmatic Deke balks at the idea of accidentally causing civilian casualties if he misses. The training sequences mesh incredibly well with Wulfgar’s surveillance of new targets, giving us new clashing views in our combatants’ professional lives as well as their morals. While Wulfgar is having a grand old time, Deke and Fox are sweating out Hartman’s tedious counter-terrorism classes before hitting the streets. I couldn’t help but compare Nighthawks’ with another great vintage cop thriller, The French Connection. There, we observe how its chief criminal, crafty drug lord Chaunier, alias “Frog One”, effortlessly invades New York City for his newest dealings while being tailed by NYPD detectives “Popeye” Doyle and “Cloudy” Russo. Frog One is enjoying the finer things of life like dining at fine Manhattan restaurants, whereas Popeye and Cloudy, the two blue-collar cops, are suffering through their freezing their butts off during their winter stakeouts and eating cardboard-textured pizza slices. Director William Friedkin painstakingly captures the juxtaposition in his heroes and villains in their lives. Now, Nighthawks’ director Bruce Malmuth is nowhere near as legendary compared to Friedkin. But at least he manages to capture the same kind of flip-flopping technique of showing the villain’s casual approach to terrorism, opposite his cop pursuers’ tedium on the job. The cops’ surveillance bears fruit when they finally lay eyes on their suspect. DaSilva and Fox corner Wulfgar in a flashy Manhattan discotheque, and what follows is one of the best cinematic stare-downs ever filmed. With the pulsing disco back-beat of Keith Emerson’s cover of the 1960s pop tune “I’m a Man” blaring in the background, the camera cuts back and forth from Stallone and Hauer’s POVs. Wulfgar knows his cover is blown. The tension is further amplified by the club’s music and the strobing lights. It’s a fabulous foreboding sense of dread that leads to a frenetic foot chase deep within New York’s subway tunnels. The chase is fast and incredibly riveting that concludes with a violent and bloody aftermath. I won’t give away details, but let’s just say Wulfgar has officially incurred Deke’s wrath. The cat and mouse chase aspect only gets more intense from here. In a superbly claustrophobic scene, Wulfgar hijacks the Roosevelt Island Tram and holds a group of UN delegates hostage where he forces Deke to a face-to-face confrontation high above the East River. I love the way Wulfgar tries to justifies his actions much to Deke’s disbelief and disgust. Like many movie terrorists, Wulfgar believes himself a hero, a freedom fighter, a liberator of the oppressed. And Hauer relishes every word of his character’s cause. From Wulfgar to his legendary performance as sinister “replicant” Roy Batty in Blade Runner, down to his delightfully sadistic murderer in The Hitcher, Rutger Hauer (1944 – 2019) oozed charismatic evil, like it was nothing. Nighthawks was Hauer’s stepping stone to mainstream stardom, and it was an explosive one at that, literally and figuratively! And Stallone? Well, he’s strong and commanding as always, but with a considerable difference this time around. Nighthawks was Sly’s first big-screen lawman role, and, unlike his more macho cop characters, his Deke DaSilva is his most realistic, and vulnerable. Sporting eye glasses and long hair with matching beard, Sly could almost pass himself off as big brother to Al Pacino’s Frank Serpico. It’s easy to make the comparison, as both characters are tough, yet sensitive cops who wear their badges and hearts on their sleeves. As we movie buffs all know, Sylvester Stallone is the king of the underdog heroes. Rocky Balboa and John Rambo are the underdog archetypes, and to certain degrees, so is Deke DaSilva. You know Deke always gets the job done, and he’s refreshingly human when he does. Nighthawks is a first-rate thriller that does beg the question, “Could acts of terrorism happen in the United States?” Released at least 20 years before the tragedies of 9/11, the movie gives a vivid look of what living under the grip of terror-based fear in the US may look like. Lesser movies may depict terrorists as cartoonish, faceless foreign drones who blindly and violently pursue a cause with any means necessary. This plot formula was prominently used in mindless popcorn flicks churned out by the Cannon Group, like Invasion USA or The Delta Force. But Nighthawks provides a grittier, more procedural look at the dirty work of a professional terrorist, and the law enforcement efforts to take the criminal menace down. Make no mistake: while the film may resembles a counter-terrorism training course, but it’s a damn suspenseful training course worth taking! See the original trailer here! https://youtu.be/cnvbtAoucPU
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About Yours Truly
Unearthing great forgotten and criminally underrated pop culture mediums is my specialty! Whether the topic be about cinema, television, music, or other fun bits of obscure minutiae, I love analyzing and unleashing these lost treasures to the unwitting public! Archives
October 2020
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