In many
respects, Nighthawks (1981) is an
inferior variation on The French
Connection (1971) with two New York City cops tracking down a criminal
mastermind in the mean streets only replacing international drug smuggling with
international terrorism. In fact, Nighthawks
was originally intended to be a sequel to The
French Connection II (1975), but was shelved with Gene Hackman decided not
to reprise his character from the first two films. You could make a list of the
ways in which William Friedkin’s film is superior to Nighthawks but it has Rutger Hauer going for it, which is a big
plus, and he commands the screen in every scene he’s in as a Carlos the
Jackal-esque terrorist. If this movie is a French
Connection rip-off then it’s a very entertaining one with plenty of
exciting action sequences and a fascinating, tension-filled cat and mouse game
at its core.
We are
introduced to our protagonists – police detectives Deke DaSilva (Sylvester Stallone) and Matthew Fox (Billy Dee Williams) – on decoy duty as they bust a
bunch of muggers. Already the subpar French
Connection aspects become apparent as Deke chases one of the muggers onto
an elevated train platform but not before engaging in some cheesy tough
guy-speak. If this opening scene wasn’t a good enough example of Deke and
Matt’s skills as crackerjack cops, we get another one where they break up a
drug den and the latter freaks out when one of the crooks tries to pay him off.
It gives Billy Dee Williams the chance to do some intense yelling but also
gives him a nice moment when he spots a scared little kid among the drug
peddlers and that’s the reality check that cools him off.
Meanwhile,
in London, England, international terrorist Wulfgar (Hauer) blows up a
department store (not before interacting with a beautiful young clerk played by
Catherine Mary Stewart no less). In a nicely orchestrated sequence, he’s set-up
by one of his own and with ruthless efficiency kills three cops. He escapes to
Paris where he hooks up with a loyal cohort known as Shakka (Persis Khambatta)
and we get an amusing bit where he threatens a plastic surgeon to do some work
on his face and make look “beautiful” before heading to New York City after
realizing that he’s become too high-profile in Europe.
Back at
police headquarters, Deke and Matt have been summoned and told by their boss
(played by consummate New York character actor Joe Spinell), who’s tired of
their loose cannon antics, that they’ve been reassigned to a terrorist
taskforce known as the Anti Terrorist Action Command squad (or A.T.A.C.) in
conjunction with Interpol. Naturally, this doesn’t sit well with our heroes
who’d rather be on the streets busting drug dealers and other low-lifes. When
they voice their protests it gives their boss a chance to cut loose and chew
them out in the grand tradition of the genre: “Understand this, sucker! You’re
a cop and you’ll go where you’re assigned!” Normally, this would be
eye-rolling, cliché dialogue, but Joe Spinell, god bless him, delivers it with
conviction.
Soon,
Deke and Matt find themselves being taught counter-terrorist techniques by
Peter Hartman (Nigel Davenport), a Brit and the head of A.T.A.C. He stresses
that in dealing with Wulfgar they must be ruthless and kill him without
hesitation – something that goes against their training as police officers.
Sylvester Stallone and Billy Dee Williams play well off each other in this
scene as their characters mess with each other while Hartman drones on. They’d
rather be on the streets but he makes a convincing argument for them absorbing
all of this information. The more they know about Wulfgar the better their
chances are of finding and stopping him.
It is
significant to note that Nighthawks
features Stallone before he became a successful action star and he still had
one foot in serious acting. You can see him mustering all the gravitas he can
for the role and this is especially evident in the scenes he has with Hauer who
forces Stallone to raise his game. Billy Dee Williams was also a big deal at
the time, coming off high-profile films like Lady Sings the Blues (1972), Mahogany
(1975), Star Wars: Episode V: The
Empire Strikes Back (1980). The actor brings his trademark easy-going charm
to the role. Stallone and Williams are very believable as partners and this is
conveyed in the ease and familiarity of how they interact with each other. Deke
is the headstrong one while Matt is more rational and they complement each
other well.
Wulfgar
would be the first of three memorable antagonistic roles Rutger Hauer would
play in the 1980s, along with Blade
Runner (1982) and The Hitcher (1986).
Each character is distinctive as he makes them fascinating due in large part to
his skill as an actor and his charisma. It is also the way Hauer carries
himself. In Nighthawks, Wulfgar can
turn on the charm when he needs to and then become ruthless in an instant.
Hauer portrays his character as a cold-hearted sociopath intent on high-profile
acts of terrorism. I like that the movie shows Wulfgar doing his homework –
reviewing not just the international dignitaries of his next target but also
Hartman and the members of A.T.A.C., in particular, Deke. At times, you can
tell that Hauer is having fun with the role, like in the scene where Wulfgar
commandeers a cable car full of people and after warning them about the lethal
nature of Shakka (“Do not underestimate her because she’s a woman, she has no
maternal instincts.”), he compliments one of the hostage’s hat.
To
prepare for the role, Sylvester Stallone and producer Martin Poll spent weeks
out on patrol with decoy cops, police officers that make themselves available
to being robbed or mugged and then backup arrives and arrests the crooks. Actor
and producer had to sign releases not to sue if they were shot or killed. “We
stayed in the backup vehicles,” Poll said. He found that many decoy cops were
divorced, like Deke in the movie: “They’re out late, and it’s dangerous, and
after awhile the wives get tired of waiting to see whether the men are coming
home or not.” Poll remembered that decoy cops faced a lot of danger on the job.
One of the men they went out with had his throat cut: “He got to the hospital,
they sewed him up, and about eight weeks later, he was shot and killed.”
When it
came to casting Wulfgar, Poll’s son told his father about a Dutch actor named
Rutger Hauer that he saw in Paul Verhoeven’s Soldier of Orange (1977). Poll saw it and had Hauer fly to
California to meet with him and Stallone. Within a minute, Poll and Stallone
knew Hauer was right for the role. At the time, the actor had gotten an offer
to appear in The Sphinx, a big budget
Hollywood movie for more money but he found the premise of Nighthawks and the character he was to play more interesting and
chose it instead. To prepare for the part, the actor read “anything that had
been written on terrorist groups operating in Europe.” He was drawn to the
character of Wulfgar because “I love a character who says, ‘I’m bad. You
understand?’ I think it’s good to admit things about yourself, to come out with
them.”
The
production of Nighthawks was rife with
problems. Just over a week into principal photography, Poll fired director Gary Nelson (The Black Hole) and hired
Bruce Malmuth. He had been directing commercials for years and, thanks to his
friendship with director John Avildsen, befriended Stallone during the early
stages of Rocky (1976). The actor was
impressed with his work and asked him to take over for Nelson. The studio
agreed with this decision and told Poll, “It’s your picture, just don’t stop
shooting.”
According
to Hauer, since Rocky, Stallone had
made a few commercially unsuccessful movies and “felt it was important for this
one to be good. And he made everybody around him know it.” During principal
photography, Hauer and Stallone had an antagonistic relationship that mirrored
the one on-screen. In the scene where Deke and Matt chase Wulfgar through the
New York subway system, Hauer consistently outran “fitness fanatic” Stallone,
who, according to Hauer, “trained by running up the staircases of office
buildings.”
Further
along into production, some of the residents of Roosevelt Island didn’t want
the filmmakers shooting on the tramway that connected the island with
Manhattan. An injunction was granted and the production was forced to shut down
while the studio went to court. The judge ruled in favor of the studio and
filming continued. Stallone decided to do most of his own stunts, including a
dangerous one that saw him suspended 242 feet in the air above the East River
from a 1/8 inch steel cable. The day before, he saw a man jump off the bridge
to his death. “I saw that, and had to go up the next day. There was a fireboat
down below with two divers in it. I made the mistake of calling them
‘lifeguards.’ It was explained to me that they were not lifeguards. They were
there to retrieve my body, if necessary.”
Problems
continued into post-production. According to Stallone, the studio didn’t
believe that “urban terrorism would ever happen in New York thus felt the story
was far-fetched.” He has said that the studio lost faith in the movie “and cut
it to pieces. What was in the missing scenes was extraordinary acting by Rutger
Hauer, Lindsay Wagner, and the finale was a blood fest that rivaled the finale
of Taxi Driver. But it was a blood
fest with a purpose.” Wagner said at the time of the film’s release, “Sly and I
had some powerful scenes together. But the picture was too long, and they
wanted to keep the action moving. So our scenes together were cut.”
Nighthawks was not well-received by critics at
the time of its release. In her review for The
New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “It is particularly helped by the
performance of Rutger Hauer, a Dutch actor who makes a startling impression as a
cold-blooded fiend, and Sylvester Stallone, from whom less is definitely more.”
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.” In his review for the Globe and Mail, Jay Scott wrote 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.” The Washington Post’s Gary Arnold wrote, “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.”
Nighthawks certainly has its share of exciting
action sequences, like an intense chase on a subway platform and a tense cable
car rescue where Deke meets Wulfgar face-to-face and is suspended precariously
above the East River. The movie is a fast-paced thriller that not only harkens
back to cop procedurals from the 1970s, like The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) but also looks ahead to
the action movies of the ‘80s that Stallone would help popularize. One can’t
help but lament the movie that could have been before he and the studio got
their editorial hands all over it, gutting it into the entertaining but ultimately
subpar French Connection wannabe that
is the final product. It is a testimony to the material and the performances of
the cast that the compromised version is as good as it is, surviving the myriad
of production problems to become the movie that its fans know and love.
SOURCES
Bennetts,
Leslie. “Bringing a New Dimension to Badness.” The New York Times. April
19, 1981.
Chase,
Chris. “At the Movies.” The New York Times. April 10, 1981.
Day,
Maggie. “The Start of a Rocky Film
Career.” Chicago Tribune. April 13, 1981.
Ebert,
Roger. “Interview with Sylvester Stallone.” Chicago Sun-Times. July 13,
1980.
Hauer,
Rutger with Patrick Quinlan. All Those
Moments. HarperCollins. 2007.
Moriarty.
“Round One with Sylvester Stallone Q &A.” Ain’t-It-Cool-News.
December 3, 2006.
Thomas,
Bob. “Lindsay Loves Move to Film.” Globe and Mail. June 15, 1981.
