I've always had a soft spot in my heart for Stallone's late-70s/early-80s movies, especially F.I.S.T., the original First Blood, and most of all Nighthawks. These flicks capture the Stallone who actually deserved to be a big action-movie star, not the mumbly caricature of later shit like Cliffhanger. Nighhawks is unusual for a lot of reasons, though none of those reasons having anything to do with the plot or characters, which are pretty generic. What fascinates me about this movie is that while it is definitely a rather by-the-numbers cop movie (aiming for The French Connection but truly just a scant cut above any random episode of "S.W.A.T."), its primary cast features actors who were huge stars at the time. Stallone was in between Rocky II and First Blood; Billy Dee Williams was between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi; Rutger Hauer was coming from a popular career in German action movies and yet to do Blade Runner, and Catherine Mary Stewart was hot off The Apple! Okay, so no one but me would care about Catherine Mary Stewart's extremely small role in Nighthawks, but she does look exactly as she did in The Apple, so to me it seems like a huge celebrity cameo. But more than this, Sylvester Stallone and Billy Dee Williams in a cop thriller, before the Lethal Weapon era of wisecrackin', mismatched cops? It's some good shit. Rambo and Lando play Detectives Deke DaSilva and Matthew Fox, recruited into an elite anti-terrorist task force to bring a stop to international terrorist Wulfgar (Hauer), who is on the run from some bombings and murders he did in Europe, with his sights set on staging an act of political terrorism on American soil. More relevant now than then, probably, except for Stallone's extremely fluffy hair. Lots of good chase scenes, a highly memorable climax on a tram car above the East River, and a couple of slightly laughable "twists" involving Stallone undercover as a woman. What sells the movie, though, is that it doesn't wink at all – it's very serious about everything, and the performances manage not to veer off into pure machismo. Well, how could they, given a bearded Stallone wearing a dress? Cool soundtrack by Keith Emerson, too! Why audiences didn't demand a sequel is beyond me. Perhaps it's time for a reunion movie, or a remake in which DaSilva and Fox train young anti-terrorist forces to take on, like, people who fly planes into buildings.
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