Nighthawks (film)

Nighthawks
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Bruce Malmuth
Produced by	Herb Nanas Martin Poll
Written by	David Shaber Paul Sylbert
Starring	Sylvester Stallone Billy Dee Williams Rutger Hauer Lindsay Wagner Persis Khambatta Nigel Davenport
Music by	Keith Emerson
Cinematography	James A. Contner
Editing by	Stanford C. Allen Christopher Holmes
Studio	Martin Poll Productions The Production Company
Distributed by	Universal Pictures CIC
Release dates	April 4, 1981 (1981-04-04) April 13, 1981 (1981-04-13) April 22, 1981 (1981-04-22) April 29, 1981 (1981-04-29) May 20, 1981 (1981-05-20) June 4, 1981 (1981-06-04) June 5, 1981 (1981-06-05) July 24, 1981 (1981-07-24) August 14, 1981 (1981-08-14) September 11, 1981 (1981-09-11) April 11, 1983 (1983-04-11) September 19, 1985 (1985-09-19)
Running time	99 min.
Country	United States United Kingdom France
Language	English French German Swedish
Budget	$5,000,000
Box office	$19,905,359[1]

Nighthawks is a 1981 American-British-French thriller film directed by Bruce Malmuth and starring Sylvester Stallone, Rutger Hauer, Billy Dee Williams, Lindsay Wagner, Persis Khambatta and Nigel Davenport.^[2] The original music score was composed by Keith Emerson.

Plot

The story revolves around the lives of two NYPD police detectives, Det. Sgts. Deke DaSilva (Sylvester Stallone) and Matthew Fox (Billy Dee Williams) who work undercover, and a terrorist Heymar Reinhardt, alias Wulfgar (Rutger Hauer). In the South Bronx during the late night to early morning hours on New Year's Eve 1980, three armed assailants attempt a mugging on a supposedly unsuspecting woman, who turns out to be DaSilva in drag for a carefully planned sting operation. Fox immobilizes two of the suspects as Deke chases the third upstairs to the 174th Street (IRT White Plains Road Line) Subway Station platform and dares the man to cut him. Deke then incapacitates him with a scarf and places him under arrest.

The next scene takes place in London on the same day, where Wulfgar bombs a department store, instilling the will of fear in the surrounding society. Meanwhile, back in New York City on January 4, 1981, DaSilva and Fox serve a high risk warrant in the Bronx. They raid a known drug distribution spot. The obvious corruption in the police department is exposed in the suspect's dialogue as a minor subplot. Two days later in London, Wulfgar converses with his contact at a party, Kenna, who tells Wulfgar that Mercer, who we never see but come to know as the financier of Wulfgar's operations, is withholding money owed to Wulfgar because several children were killed in Wulfgar's latest bombing. Wulfgar quickly discovers that Kenna had been held at Heathrow Airport in police custody, and has inadvertently led police to Wulfgar's location. Wulfgar then proceeds to murder Kenna and the policemen who had converged on the location. The next day, he then flees to Paris where he meets his associate, Shakka Holland (Persis Khambatta) at La Sainte-Chapelle. Shakka remarks that La Sainte-Chapelle is a bad meeting place because it is next to (in real life too), the Palais de Justice, a courthouse in Paris. She informs Wulfgar that Kenneth's death was a rash decision, for the police found a passport that he'd brought to Wulfgar on his person. Wulfgar also realizes he has killed one of his own, and is now facing alienation from his allies. With his identity revealed to all European authorities, Wulfgar and Shakka visit a plastic surgeon, who changes Wulfgar's appearance. After the process, the surgeon becomes a liability, and is murdered by Wulfgar, who then flees to New York City.

Meanwhile at Central Park, after having their latest undercover detail compromised by two uniformed officers, DaSilva and Fox are informed that they have been transferred from the Street Crime Unit and into a special Federal-State Unit. After a touchy moment with their superior, Lieutenant Munafo (Joe Spinell), they discover that their transfer orders came from the commissioner, who had received the orders from Washington D.C.. The fact that the two detectives served in Vietnam also play into this, making them two of the highest recommended candidates for the special unit. The Anti-Terrorist Action Command (A.T.A.C.) squad is assembled by INTERPOL British Counter-terrorist specialist Peter Hartman (Nigel Davenport). Hartman believes Wulfgar will come to the U.S. next primarily for the press coverage. Hartman schools DaSilva, Fox and a specially selected team of New York police on Wulfgar, Shakka, and terrorism in general on his proactive approach to finding and taking out terrorists. But the 'shoot-to-kill' policy that Hartman encourages doesn't go down well with DeSilva, who says it sounds like an order to be an assassin insead of a policeman. Hartman also makes a personal comment regarding DaSilva's ex-wife, which causes him to leave, but opening him up to the connections of the underground New York City.

According to Hartman, Wulfgar wastes no time in becoming familiar with new surroundings. After completing the latter, Hartman states that Wulfgar, an aficionado for the vivid nightclub scene, will try to find safe housing for his arsenal. Sure enough, Wulfgar meets Pam, a flight attendant, in a nightclub and moves in with her. Surprisingly enough, when she asks him what he does for a living, he tells her the complete and total truth: "I'm an international terrorist wanted on three continents." She takes it as humor. Wulfgar then announces his presence in New York by bombing several locations in the Wall Street area. Alone in her apartment while Wulfgar (known as Eric to Pam), is away, Pam discovers his arsenal. Wulfgar kills Pam, and her death is the first break Hartman, DaSilva and Fox get. Wulfgar has left behind a map of the Wall Street area. According to investigators, the location that had been bombed was marked. DaSilva and Fox investigate Pam's favorite nightspots and hope to find Wulfgar at one of them. They do find him. But, unsure of what he looks like since the plastic surgery, they hesitate and after a long chase and nearly fatal hostage situation on the New York City Subway's IND 6th Avenue Line, Wulfgar gets away, slashing Fox's face in the process. An angry DaSilva vows to kill Wulfgar who makes his getaway. Wulfgar takes refuge in the basement of a little grocery store, where it is revealed that Shakka is now in the United States to inform him that the NYPD and the United Nations delegation members have a description of him. She also informs him that revolutionary communities back in Europe are paying attention to the Wall Street bombings, but have not yet decided to rehire him. In the meantime, the two research on the UN personnel and the A.T.A.C team and plan their next move.

On January 17, the members of A.T.A.C. are protecting a United Nations function at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that has the earmarks of a potential terrorist target. Shakka infiltrates the party in disguise. She corners Hartman on an escalator and murders him. Wulfgar and Shakka then hijack a Roosevelt Island Tram car carrying U.N. representatives. He executes the wife of the French ambassador while DaSilva is watching from a hovering police helicopter as a penalty for the nightclub and subway chase. Wulfgar decides to release an infant on board the car, and demands that DaSilva personally board the tramway to rescue it. DaSilva is winched up to the aerial tram and confronts Wulfgar face-to-face. DaSilva demands to know why Wulfgar killed the woman. “I wanted to,” the sadist replies. However, he decides to spare his nemesis for the moment. DaSilva and the baby are lowered back down to a waiting barge.

The police agree to Wulfgar's demands for a MTA New York City Transit bus to escort him and the hostages to the airport, where a jet will be waiting for takeoff. Wulfgar and Shakka hide among the crowd of hostages from the tram. DaSilva waits until they try to board before making his move. He plays back a recording of Hartman's lecture in which the terrorist expert denounces Shakka. In a rage, Shakka breaks from the hostages and is gunned down by Fox. Wulfgar returns fire on the police. He escapes, driving the bus off a ramp into the East River.

A search of the wreckage shows no sign of Wulfgar. The team finds the store where Wulfgar has been staying and DaSilva finds that Wulfgar has gathered information on all participating members of A.T.A.C., including Fox, Hartman, and DaSilva: an address of his ex-wife, Irene (Lindsay Wagner) is found on one of the printouts. Wulfgar makes his way to Irene's house, hides outside, and sees Irene walk up to the house and goes in. He breaks in, finds her washing dishes and sneaks up behind her brandishing a knife. But DaSilva has made it to Irene's first; he turns around, wearing his ex-wife's housecoat and a blonde wig, brandishing a gun. With nowhere to go, Wulfgar lunges at DaSilva who fires his revolver twice into the terrorist, sending his dead body crashing back into the street.

Cast

• Sylvester Stallone ... Detective Sergeant Deke DaSilva
• Billy Dee Williams ... Detective Sergeant Matthew Fox
• Lindsay Wagner ... Irene DaSilva
• Persis Khambatta ... Shakka Holland/Shakka Kapoor
• Nigel Davenport ... Peter Hartman
• Rutger Hauer ... Heymar "Wulfgar" Reinhardt/Eric
• Hilary Thompson ... Pam
• Joe Spinell ... Lieutenant Munafo
• Walter Mathews ... Commissioner
• E. Brian Dean ... Sergeant
• Caesar Cordova ... Puerto Rican Proprietor
• Charles Duval ... Dr. Ghiselin
• Tony Munafo ... Big Mike
• Howard Stein ... Disco Manager
• Tawn Christian ... Disco Hostess
• Jamie Gillis ... Designer
• Catherine Mary Stewart ... London shop assistant

Production

The story was originally planned as The French Connection III by screenwriter David Shaber at Twentieth Century Fox, and would have seen Gene Hackman's Popeye Doyle team up with a wisecracking cop, to be possibly played by Richard Pryor. The main plot was the same but when Hackman showed reluctance to do a third movie as Doyle the idea was scrapped and Universal acquired the rights to the storyline, which Shaber then reworked into Nighthawks.

The original director was Gary Nelson, who had directed the Disney movies Freaky Friday (1976) and The Black Hole (1979), but he left the project early into production and was not credited. His replacement, Bruce Malmuth, had only one previous film to his credit, a segment of the 1975 portmanteau comedy Foreplay. Malmuth was unable to make his first day of shooting, so Stallone stepped in to shoot the scene, the chase down the subway. Stallone had to get the approval of the Directors Guild of America (DGA), which has strict rules on actors directing their own movies, for this one day of filming. Principal photography began on January 1980 and lasted until March 1980.

The film marked the American debut of Dutch actor Rutger Hauer. According to a recent interview in Premiere, Hauer was told before filming that Stallone ran up building stairwells for exercise. However, during the subway chase, Hauer continually outran the American star, who is known for his competitive streak (see also Victory). Stallone also gave the producers headaches by insisting on doing his own stunts. According to actor Nigel Davenport in an interview for the BBC's Wogan show, Stallone performed the scene where he was winched up to the tram without a double. The film's stunt coordinator was Dar Robinson. Stallone confirms this in a Q&A session on Ain't It Cool News' website:

Hanging from the cable car was probably one of the more dangerous stunts I was asked to perform because it was untested and I was asked to hold a folding Gerber knife in my left hand so if the cable were to snap, and I survived the 230 foot fall into the East River with its ice cold 8 mile an hour current, I could cut myself free from the harness because the cable when stretched out weighed more than 300 lbs. I tell you this because it's so stupid to believe that I would survive hitting the water so to go beyond that is absurd.^[3]

In the same Q&A session, he said that Nighthawks "was even a better film before the studio lost faith in it and cut it to pieces. What was in the missing scenes was extraordinary acting by Rutger Hauer, Lindsey Wagner, and the finale was a blood fest that rivaled the finale of Taxi Driver. But it was a blood fest with a purpose".^[3]

The subway train used in the chase sequence consisted of retired IND equipment that had been preserved as a museum train. Of the cars whose numbers are visible, 800 is now at the Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport, Maine. 1802, the last prewar NYC subway car built, is owned by Railway Preservation Corporation and remains in New York, where it operates several times a year on museum fantrips along with other preserved cars. 1208 has since been scrapped. The IND Hoyt-Schermerhorn station in Brooklyn served as both the 57th and 42nd St. stations (a Hoyt-Schermerhorn sign is briefly visible when Stallone tries to pry the doors open as the train is pulling out). The train operated on the unused outer track that leads from the Court St. station, now the New York Transit Museum.

The London department store seen being blown up at the beginning of the film was actually Arding & Hobbs, located at Clapham Junction, SW11 - which at the time of filming belonged to the Allders group. The store still exists today, but is now owned by Debenhams. During the 2011 England Riots the shop again had its windows smashed.

Reception

Despite receiving good reviews, including one from Variety,^[4] Nighthawks did not become a big commercial success, even though it did recover its $5 million budget in both US and foreign markets. It grossed USD $14.9 million in North America and $5 million in the rest of the world for a worldwide total of $19.9 million.^[1] In her review for the New York Times, Janet Maslin praised Hauer's performance: "Mr. Hauer's terrorist, in particular, is a sharply drawn character who acts as a driving force within the movie's scheme. Sadism and bloodlessness are his only identifiable characteristics, and yet he behaves memorably wherever he goes".^[5] Time magazine's Richard Schickel wrote, "Nighthawks is so moronically written and directed, so entirely without wit or novelty, that there is plenty of time to wonder about its many missing explanations".^[6] In his review for the Globe and Mail, Jay Scott felt that the film, "has a dirty job to do and does it. That is not an endorsement. Thumbscrews and cattle prods are real good at what they do, too".^[7] Newsweek magazine's Jack Kroll wrote, "This is one of those films that isn't a film but some repulsively complicated business deal".^[8] In his review for the Washington Post, Gary Arnold described the film as "an aggressively shallow police thriller pitting New York undercover cops against international terrorists, suggests what The Day of the Jackal might have looked like if filmed by the producers of Baretta. In order to facilitate a grandstanding, harebrained heroic role assigned to Sylvester Stallone, the filmmakers brush off every opportunity for intelligent dramatization and authentic suspense that the plot would seem to possess".^[9]

Stallone says of the film now, "At the time, people couldn't relate to it, and the studio (Universal) didn't believe in it".^[10]

DVD

The widescreen DVD edition from Universal Pictures replaces two songs played during the disco shoot-out. The first song is "Brown Sugar" by the Rolling Stones and the second one is "I'm A Man" by Keith Emerson. Earlier VHS releases from Universal Home Video and some TV versions also featured the altered songs. The fullscreen DVD release by GoodTimes Entertainment contains the restored songs. Both versions contain the UK edit of the finale, which causes a continuity error (Stallone fires only two shots, but six bullet holes end up on Hauer by the time his body falls down the steps).

References

External links

• Nighthawks at the Internet Movie Database
• Nighthawks at allmovie
• Nighthawks at Rotten Tomatoes
• Nighthawks at Box Office Mojo
• Alternative DVD commentary for Nighthawks