Nachtfalken

Two dedicated albeit crackerjack cops (Sylvester "Sly" Stallone and Billy Dee Williams) are on a new case: They must apprehend a slick, nefarious international terrorist and not to mention notorious criminal mastermind, Wulfgar (Rutger Hauer). Wulfgar's schemes thrive on the destruction of World Order and democracy. The two detectives, whose beat have always been the petty criminals of the street, have at first expressed animadversion when they are forced to nail the wily villain, Wulfgar. They have never encountered such an eluding antagonist before. No longer can the cops use conventional tactics, but they must resort to new, fresh methods...

For Wulfgar dissembles his identity with several incognitos, thus making him a tougher target to capture.

NIGHTHAWKS is a well-mounted, well-paced thriller that puts the accent on suspense (with some bloodshed of course). NIGHTHAWKS is a neat powerhouse! The movie contains riveting chases, a spectacle for a final confrontation, and an aggressively structured formula throughout the entire film. There are lots of opportunities for combustible moments in this film as well.

What makes NIGHTHAWKS standout even greater and better than the ordinary action flick is its emphasis on characterization and morals. NIGHTHAWKS does a terrific interpretation of how fascinating and surreptitious the terrorist bad guy is compared to a troublesome criminal. Whereas the latter simply relies on survival and desperation in the derelict streets, the former is a very intelligent person with a respectively high I.Q. and an organized purpose. His mission is clear: to fight the oppressors who have destroyed his native land and people. The terrorist covers his tracks well and moves from location and location, making his presence less conspicuous. As for the heroic cops, Deke DaSilva (Stallone) manages to preserve ethics first when making a judgment before decisive action. He knows when to call out the shot. DaSilva refuses to jeopardize innocent lives just for the sake of shooting down the villain, and in most cases, he has earned a level of propriety. DaSilva's testament to moral values is also well demonstrated in NIGHTHAWKS.

Rutger Hauer gave a genuinely eerie and chilling performance as he portrays a very psychotic but also very convincing villain with a substantially bad attitude. Overall, NIGHTHAWKS is a high caliber action film. This "above and beyond the call of duty" type quality of motion picture is a consistently thorough and memorable film. This ranks among the finest cop dramas ever composed and for over a decade, this film's reputation and aura have managed to stand the test of time. NIGHTHAWKS is a recommended hit.

RATING: *** out of ****.

This film stays faithful to itself, and it's premise. It aims to be good entertainment and not much else, and succeeds commendably. Besides a bit too much stress on how great Stallone's character is at the beginning of the film the film flows rather nicely. There is a terrorist, who is a very bad man, which will do anything just to prove himself to everyone else. And there is a cop who likes to do his job clean. But with terrorism it doesn't always work that way, and that is the films meaningful angle. Although it seems like the director realized that entertainment was number one, and nothing should get in its way, therefore the film never stops to ponder too much over the police/baddie similarities, and usually after brief atmospheric tense character scenes it goes back to the action.

The action takes most of the film up, although it's not overdone too much, sometimes you do wonder if they could have run around for a bit less time. The script is the only thing that lets this down, with some of the events being a bit dubious. You do get the feeling from time to time that the scriptwriter wasn't quite sure how to chain some events so they seem a bit forced. But other ideas are kind of cute to make up for it.

Although it is full of cliches, this is not really a downside to the film, which seems to be shouting out that cliches aren't that bad. And being from the early eighties you could always argue that it was actually laying the ground for cliches to become such.

Acting is good, even from Sly, this really is the role he was born to play. He is the Rocky of the NY street undercover police. Hauer rocks in no small way, and Nigel Davenport shouts like no one (you'll see what I mean).

Watch and enjoy. That's all folks.

Remember a day when Rutger Hauer starred in good movies that actually saw wide theatrical release? No. Hmmmm. Hauer is one of my favorite actors and stars in two of my top ten favorite movies (Blade Runner and The Osterman Weekend), so it's hard not to already be slightly biased about the movie. I remember first hearing about Nighthawks on the Headliners and Legends biography of Stallone and how it was not as well received as his Rocky and First Blood movies. For shame, because Nighthawks does manage to be a top notch thriller most of the time. I could go into the plot, but I believe in telling people what I liked and disliked instead of parroting the plot details like almost every other review. (See, a movie to me is more fun when I only know a little about the story, instead of the first hour or so, because someone felt that they had to readers digest the entire film.)

Anyway, now that I've ranted, I have to admit that I enjoyed it for the most part, with the exception of the initial pacing. It continues to drag in places towards the middle, and takes a little over an hour to set up the crucial players backgrounds. The only real problem is that every time the film stops to focus on DeSilva (Stallone) and Fox (Williams), it spends twice as much time focusing on Wulfgar. Wulfgar is certainly a well crafted maniac, but when the movie is over we know almost nothing about Fox and only a little about Dee DeSilva. Still, the movie does succeed in making you care about our two main characters, by thrusting them into danger and having them do what is morally right (i.e. Towards the beginning of the film the two are in a drug raid, and refuse to take bribes from the perps who had apparently already paid off the cops from the first raid on their operation.

They're good cops, and it's their good guy image that endears them). I guess it would have been nice also to see a little more of Stallones relation to what's her name. (sorry, I haven't seen this in a about a month now.) I was interested in the prospect of a hero who was torn between the relation with his ex (who he was trying to re-ignite the flame with), and his duty. But, alas, she was just a narrative device who the writers have decided is only important in the last 15 minutes or so.

With all these cons, why did I still like it? Sudden scenes of high impact, good cast and acting all around, a villain who wasn't just a cardboard cutout, and Stallone's bitchin' beard, and a wholly convincing scenario.

The bottom line: This film is more akin to The French Connection than it is to Rocky. Methodical and often stylish, NightHawks deserves to at least be rented and watched with an open mind.

8 Stars out of 10

Long before terrorism was on the minds of most Americans, NIGHTHAWKS tackled the thorny topic. Sylvester Stallone and Billy Dee Williams are decoy cops -- that is, they venture into rough neighborhoods to bait muggers and other forms of scum -- assigned to track down the cold and calculating Rutger Hauer. It seems the devious mastermind has landed in the media capital of the world, New York City, to try and regain his place among the terrorist elite.

Although it's a fairly decent action/suspense effort, NIGHTHAWKS is difficult to recommend unconditionally. The performances are certainly solid; in fact, it's hard to remember Stallone, here sporting a thin beard, being so effective outside of boxing trunks. The action is crisp and exhilarating, with one pursuit through subterranean New York deserving of a place in the Chase Hall of Fame. The story is original and much of the plot intriguing. And Hauer, in his American film debut, is a suitably hateful villain, with his motives all to familiar to contemporary audiences.

Yet NIGHTHAWKS is not quite as good as the sum of its parts. Even though the film starts out with a bang -- literally -- there's somehow too much build-up and not enough execution. The movie has not aged particularly well, and despite its 1981 release date has the feel of a '70s period piece. And as good as Hauer is, his character is a little too incredible to believe as he pulls off massive acts of terror with little or no sponsorship; what should take a team of experts is accomplished by one man wanted by countless law enforcement agencies.

In the end, NIGHTHAWKS is a movie you're bound to like -- either a little bit or a lot. Considering the high ratio of garbage that has and will continue to spew out of Hollywood, I guess that's not such a bad thing.

...Something that I've heard again and again throughout the eighties and nineties. It's only Stallone 's and Hauer's best performances in any movie that I've seen them in. I read a positive comment (which encouraged me to write this) about this film. I was 9 years old when this movie came out: tried to sneak into it when it played in the theaters (failed), saw it a year later on cable, and I LOVED IT! I resembled a little Rutger Hauer and lived in Los Angeles at the time, so I found myself almost relating to this film. But I was so impressed that it wasn't like all of the other dreck that came out that year, too.Now international terrorism is simply a satire in today's films until 9/11. However, I think that "Die Hard" changed the industry forever in a bad way. To them more is better- to me, more is more. This movie does not glamorize violence (like the before mentioned) and shows how serious it is when it hits home. This movie did not play very long in theaters (in 1981), and hardly anyone can recollect it. It was made on a modest budget, and so many films have surpassed it since, it is now been archived.

I wish Stallone returned to this kind of role: he's so enamoured with John Rambo, Rocky Balboa, every other action-hero-cardboard role that he lost credibility. Hauer went down a separate but equal path in demonstrating his difficulties with other directors, he's a strait-to-video icon.

To this day, I still remember the lines "...I do not enjoy killing-- but it's my job!" and "...now this is for the press...Now you may drop the child, but don't drop this..."

Why can't people watch this instead of Steven Segal movies? I guess Serpico's out, Marky-Mark's in...