Nighthawks

February 09, 2007

Nighthawks (1981), starring Sylvester Stallone and Billy Dee Williams was my retro rental of the week. I watched this documentary, Shooting the Police: Film, on the cable station called Encore. I saw a few scenes from Nighthawks and it looked interesting enough. Well interesting was certainly the word. Sly and Billy Dee are undercover cops who work the night patrol, hence the name, who get picked for a new task force that will work with international police departments to stop terrorists. They reluctantly follow orders and instantly, of course, get on the trail of the biggest terrorist to hit New York. Wolfgar, played by Rutger Hauer in his first American movie, is the standard B movie villain. Though at first you think there is a rhyme and reason to his motives but there really isn’t any. He simply kills for money because there is money to be made. Not a very complex villain, but what the heck it was the eighties and these two guys: Sly and Billy Dee were seen as heroes on the big screen.

The movie suffers from most, not all, but most cop movie clichés. However I felt this movie could easily be remade today. I know I know… the last thing we need is another remake. But this movie isn’t all that good, so let’s polish up this turd and get a few things right instead of screwing up a classic.

Nighthawks is far from a perfect movie. It’s an okay movie. But its terrorist coming to America theme was very poignant. So if you are into the cop genre, there might be one or two things you haven’t seen here. They do a few things different such as the partner relationship and Sly’s love interest the Bionic Woman herself Lindsay Wagner. But if you are into Rocky Balboa and Lando Calrissian teaming up in a movie together, well by all means go out and buy Nighthawks, because this is your holy grail.