In any crime flick, the villain moves into the hero's territory, like, say, in the case of THE FRENCH CONNECTION, which NIGHTHAWKS was originally intended to be the third entry of... and Rutger Hauer as a European terrorist does wind up in New York, with a new face and bright blue eyes (he was supposedly surgically-altered to look like what he already looks like)...
But the way things turn out, it feels like buddy cop partners Sylvester Stallone (sporting an Al Pacino SERPICO beard) and Billy Dee Williams are actually guest-stars in Rutger Hauer's movie...
Especially since the film was ultimately cut to 95-minutes, and by the time narc "decoys" Stallone and Williams are called in for anti-terrorist duty, we know more about Hauer's ruthless, cold-blooded villainy) from eerily comforting a sweet Catherine Mary Stewart in a London clothes shop before blowing up the place, to killing off the surgeon and a night-clubbing stewardess) than what makes our hard-edge cops really tick...
They're already bored and whispering quips in the usual grimy precinct meeting room where imported anti-terror British chief Nigel Davenport (basically taking over for barking NY captain Joe Spinell) lectures how to hunt down Hauer's Wolfgar... meanwhile the longtime partners act like they're in a sequel after a proper introduction...
Stallone's incessant reluctance to shoot his gun makes no sense other than forecasting a predictable turnout, and his fledgling marriage to Lindsay Wagner only pays off at the climax...
Which occurs after Stallone's vain attempts to stop Hauer, following an intense yet overlong hostage sequence in a tramcar: with an antagonist so horrendous he deserves a thousand painful deaths to a relatively quick one...
So for action movie fans, NIGHTHAWKS is deeper and more interesting than most: however for those into fleshed-out thrillers, there's simply too much missing beyond the chase sequences that... with the backing of a dark-synth Keith Emeron score... entertains decently-enough, but only on a surface level.
But the way things turn out, it feels like buddy cop partners Sylvester Stallone (sporting an Al Pacino SERPICO beard) and Billy Dee Williams are actually guest-stars in Rutger Hauer's movie...
Especially since the film was ultimately cut to 95-minutes, and by the time narc "decoys" Stallone and Williams are called in for anti-terrorist duty, we know more about Hauer's ruthless, cold-blooded villainy) from eerily comforting a sweet Catherine Mary Stewart in a London clothes shop before blowing up the place, to killing off the surgeon and a night-clubbing stewardess) than what makes our hard-edge cops really tick...
They're already bored and whispering quips in the usual grimy precinct meeting room where imported anti-terror British chief Nigel Davenport (basically taking over for barking NY captain Joe Spinell) lectures how to hunt down Hauer's Wolfgar... meanwhile the longtime partners act like they're in a sequel after a proper introduction...
Stallone's incessant reluctance to shoot his gun makes no sense other than forecasting a predictable turnout, and his fledgling marriage to Lindsay Wagner only pays off at the climax...
Which occurs after Stallone's vain attempts to stop Hauer, following an intense yet overlong hostage sequence in a tramcar: with an antagonist so horrendous he deserves a thousand painful deaths to a relatively quick one...
So for action movie fans, NIGHTHAWKS is deeper and more interesting than most: however for those into fleshed-out thrillers, there's simply too much missing beyond the chase sequences that... with the backing of a dark-synth Keith Emeron score... entertains decently-enough, but only on a surface level.