carlmyers-80296 When one thinks of Sylvester Stallone they think of Rambo or Rocky or one of his many other action avatars but this film Night Hawks is where he gives one of his most underrated performances. He plays a conservative cop trying to catch an international terrorist in his city. Rutger Hauer is another actor who is better known in films like Blade Runner but he is absolutely sublime here as the bad guy. The pacing is good and the film has that raw gritty look of early 80s. If you haven't already then you should check out Night Hawks.

TonyMontana96 (Originally reviewed: 11/04/2017) Stallone is no stranger to being involved with bad movies, and Nighthawks is no exception that suffers hugely from a boring antagonist that has no personality and is practically a cliché, going through the motions without bringing anything inventive to the table. My main comparison would be this, take Dirty Harry for example, a classic cop picture with a great protagonist and antagonist, the villain there was original, impressive and very good, now take Rutger Hauer who plays the villain here, he's boring, routine and never shines, which is disappointing, much like the film but I'll get to that in a minute. Sylvester Stallone play's DaSilva, a devoted street cop with little to no background, and as for development, don't bother looking as all you'll know is that he doesn't like killers, but then again, who does. Now Stallone is not very good here, merely passable, but I'm guessing this is due to the dreadful script which Is riddled with clichéd, dull dialogue and that has but one good particular scene where a cop is stabbed and he shouts at the top of his voice your f**king dead" and many more words along those lines in a menacing way towards the villain who is seen fleeing, now this was his one and only good scene because I could believe the anger in DaSilva's voice, and it's perhaps one of few moments that are decent. The story is uninspired even for one of the earlier 'routine cop picture's', two street cops played by Stallone and Billy Dee Williams are after an international terrorist who kills tons of innocent people, some people get shot to keep the audience awake and character development, depth and originality all take a detour into a black hole, that for me is pretty much Nighthawks, but then again I'm being to kind, this is trash, and a really underwhelming bore of a film. The performances are really forgettable, including Billy Dee Williams who play's Sergeant Fox, DaSilva's dedicated partner, who overacts and made me laugh at one point, and who disappears later on after getting injured, that's how careless the makers of this picture were. Other uninspired supporting performances include Lindsay Wagner who plays Irene, a thrown in love interest for Stallone character, now she has one or two scenes, and half way through DaSilva tells her the will go to dinner, she agrees, the story keeps running, and yet I never saw them speak again, maybe she evaporated, or perhaps the screenwriters couldn't be bothered to continue with that romance. Either way it sucked, quite possibly the worst written, dull romance ever seen within a cop film, and later on there is a real nerve, to use Irene's character as a plot device, which ended up so damn predictable, and yet the real Irene was seen walking along the street moments before, did they tell her not to go back to the apartment? No, screenwriter David Shaber just assumes the cops told her and that she is aware of DaSilva's plan, I'm guessing he felt it was unnecessary to provide explanations and coherence. Truth be told, this is a real jumble of sorts, where crappy writing and questionable plotting take centre stage. Another howler is the humour, if there was any, because I didn't laugh, including one pathetic scene where Stallone's character is insulted by his commanding officer who makes a joke about his previous divorce; DaSilva slowly leaves the room in silence, only later on they are like best buddies, telling each other "want to go for Chinese food later, sure, but you're paying", for which there was a joke that was pointless remembering. The film also drags, it's only an hour and a half, and it got even more tedious as it progressed, and despite some well shot cinematography, realistic nightclubs and decent costume designs, the film is still a mess. Bruce Malmuth's direction is unimpressive, and I can't even remember the soundtrack and the final hostage situation in a heightened passenger car is yet again forgettable and predictable. All in all the picture has a routine story that's told badly, and the ridiculous, uneven plotting, lack of depth and unconvincing performances only sink it even more, Nighthawks is dull, forgettable trash.

gwnightscream Sylvester Stallone, Billy Dee Williams and Rutger Hauer star in this 1981 action thriller. This mainly takes place in New York and Stallone (Rocky, Rambo) plays cop, DaSilva who is determined to stop international terrorist, Wulfgar (Hauer) who makes his work of bombing and killing known through the media. Williams (The Empire Strikes Back) plays DaSilva's partner, Fox who gets slightly injured while in pursuit. Lindsay Wagner (The Bionic Woman) and the late, Joe Spinell (Rocky, Maniac) also appear. This is a good 80's cop/action thriller following in the footsteps of "Dirty Harry," Stallone is great as usual as well as Hauer who always plays a great villain. I recommend this.

slightlymad22 Continuing my plan to watch every Sly Stallone movie in order, I come to Nighthawks.Plot In A Paragraph. Deke DaSilva (Stallone playing a Police Officer for the first time in his career) and Matthew Fox (Billy Dee Williams) are two New York City cops who get transferred to an elite anti-terrorism squad. About this same time, an infamous international terrorist called Wulfar (Rutgar Hauer) shows up in New York City.I'm not to sure why audiences stayed away from this movie, as it is a really good cop movie, with Sly (looking very much like Al Pacino in Serpico) putting in a good performance, alongside Billy Dee Williams and Rutgar Hauer. If anything it was ahead of its time. According to Hauer, Stallone was very egoistic and he constantly interfered with filming of the movie, even writing and adding some new scenes for his character because he was jealous that Hauer's character was doing more "cool" stuff in the movie. Two test screenings of the movie were shown, one with more Stallone's scenes and other with more Hauer's scenes. The version with more Hauer's scenes was better received by audience. This is why Stallone, known for his big ego, cut out some of the Hauer's scenes from the final version of the movie. The original cut of the movie was almost two and a half hours long. Stallone was said to be really disappointed with the way Universal studio reedited the movie (despite the fact that he did his share of reediting on the movie prior to the studio's interference). He was really upset because of the removal of his dramatic scenes with Lindsay Wagner, including an emotional scene between him and Wagner in a restaurant (only mentioned in the final version of the movie) where his character breaks down and cries after his wife refuses to remarry with him.Prior to its theatrical release, It was also severely cut for violence by both the MPAA. Amongst the scenes that were cut are the disco shootout which originally had Wufgar shooting and killing more people, and Wufgar's death scene in the ending which was almost completely cut out. An original uncut scene showed Wufgar getting shot five times (instead of twice) in slow-motion by DaSilva, and in the end, the final sixth shot hit him in the head blowing his brains out. An animatronic head of Rutger Hauer was made by special makeup artist Dick Smith and used in this scene.After starting in Rocky, Paradise Alley and Rocky 2, this is Joe Spinell's final appearance in a movie with his friend Sylvester Stallone.