Nighthawks is a 1981 American neo-noir action crime drama film directed by Bruce Malmuth and starring Sylvester Stallone with Billy Dee Williams, Lindsay Wagner, Persis Khambatta, Nigel Davenport, and Rutger Hauer.
[4] The film follows a pair of international terrorists who come to New York City and the police detectives who, as part of a newly-formed anti-terrorism squad, are tasked with identifying and neutralizing them.
Three armed assailants attack a woman who turns out to be NYPD Detective Sergeant Deke DaSilva of the Street Crimes Unit in disguise.
His partner, Detective Sergeant Matthew Fox, immobilizes two of the assailants; Deke chases the third upstairs to a subway-station platform, taunts him, and incapacitates him with a scarf.
In Paris, Wulfgar meets his partner, Shakka, and learns that his handlers are ostracizing him because the bombing killed a number of children.
Wulfgar undergoes facial surgery to alter his appearance and decides to move his terrorist campaign to New York City.
Lt. Munafo transfers DaSilva and Fox to the newly formed ATAC (Anti-Terrorist Action Command) squad, where they meet Hartman.
In New York City, Wulfgar moves in with a flight attendant named Pam and kills her when she discovers his arsenal.
Acting on a tip, Munafo orders DaSilva and Fox to search every nightclub the flight attendant had visited.
After hijacking a Roosevelt Island Tramway car, Wulfgar executes the wife of the French ambassador while DaSilva watches from a hovering police helicopter.
Wulfgar escapes by driving the bus off a ramp into the East River, but after searching the area, the police cannot find him.
The story was originally planned as The French Connection III by screenwriter David Shaber at Twentieth Century Fox, with Gene Hackman's Popeye Doyle teamed up with a wisecracking cop (possibly played by Richard Pryor).
When Hackman was reluctant to make a third film as Doyle, the idea was scrapped; Universal acquired the rights to the storyline, which Shaber reworked into Nighthawks.
Principal photography began January 1980 (when the final draft of the script was completed), and production ended in April 1980.
Because of problems with Stallone's and the studio's interference in post-production, the film was heavily re-edited and was released a year after it was finished.
The original director was Gary Nelson—who had directed the Disney films Freaky Friday (1976) and The Black Hole (1979)—but he was dismissed from the project after a week of production and was not credited.
His replacement, Bruce Malmuth,[5] had only one previous film to his credit: a segment of the 1975 portmanteau comedy, Fore Play.
Hauer later learned that the cable was pulled forcefully according to Stallone's order, and their relationship was then marked by disagreements.
[8]According to Hauer, Nighthawks was a missed opportunity and the issue of international terrorism could have been handled more accurately: "We had only to play tags – the written story was much more dangerous".
The train ran on an unused outer track leading from the Court Street station, now the New York Transit Museum.
The London department store blown up at the beginning of the film was Arding & Hobbs in Clapham Junction, which belonged to the Allders group at the time.
[9]In a 1980 interview with Roger Ebert, Stallone mentioned problems with stunts he wanted to perform himself in Nighthawks.
According to the actor, he spent 15 weeks in near-total seclusion in his hotel room between scenes and it was the most stressful time of his life.
Stallone posted on the Ain't It Cool News website that Nighthawks "was a very difficult film to make namely because no one believed that urban terrorism would ever happen in New York, and thus felt that the story was far fetched.
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".