i want you to hit me as hard as you can
why'd you kill the woman i wanted to so why don't you kill me
in due time welcome back to sylvester stallone revisited so picking things up in the year 1979
and after the mammoth success of rocky ii sylvester stallone's star was solidified and next
he picked the 80s yet feels like the 70s action thriller nighthawks as his next project so why
did he choose that film well he said the material resonated with him and that's good enough for me
so what's it all about you got stallone pimping a serpaco beard a badass leather jacket and at
his most epic when it comes to his killer thousand-yard stare that is used so many
times in classics like first blood cobra etc what else does one really need to know episode
done thank you for watching just kidding let's start trouble okay why are you always into trouble
nighthawks is about two cops named dick de silva and matthew fox and no not the guy from lost
it's insane it's impossible and they're played by semester stallone and of course billy d williams
the coolest of the cool i don't claim you can have a better time with cole 45 than without it
but why take chances and the two of them are on the hunt for wolfgard a bomb happy international
terrorist played by the late and great dutch actor rutger hauer in his first american role so you've
got stallone billy dee and rutgerhauer i mean that is a trio not to be tangled with it's a gritty
old-school and fairly engaging flick from start to finish a visceral game of cat mouse if you will
two men on opposite sides of the law on a collision course taking into account its sordid
production history it's kind of a miracle this movie came out as well as it did so let's dive
right in the screenplays by david schaeber and was first supposed to be for the french connection
part three gene hackman's popeye doyle was to have a new partner and they had richard pryor
of all people in mind to play him guess who billy d williams replaced in the finished film
his performance was probably a little bit more serious than richard pryor's would have been
when gene hackman finally said no dice on going down popeye doyle lane once again that was all
for that all the best love and kisses so universal pictures acquired the rights to the storyline and
the script was rewritten to shave off all the french connection references production began
under the rule of director gary nelson who had done the disney films freaky friday and best
movie you never saw entry the black hole yeah i know that's it's kind of a weird choice for a down
and dirty action thriller isn't it well suffice to say gary nelson didn't last too long on the show
his ass was [ __ ] canned after just one week of production why nobody really knows but they
went with an even odder pick to replace him a very green director named bruce malmoth why would the
studio bring in some dude with just one film under his belt the 1975 film foreplay and a comedy this
is just beyond me but i have a theory he was kind of a puppet director for sylvester stallone this
is something that stallone has occasionally done in his career where stallone has directed a movie
in all but the official credits i think there's quite a few of his films in this filmography that
you could say are technically sylvester stallone films even though other credits are directed
there are so many moments in this film that have stallone's fingerprints all over them
in terms of his visual style as seen in his later directorial efforts the man was a mega star after
the first two rocky movies do you really think he was gonna let gary nelson tell him what to do
i really doubt it i mean he's stallone so here's a quote from sly which he said at the
london palladium in 2014 that kind of supports our hunch that the success of rocky actually made him
insufferable and that he thought he had authority on everything and admitted i abused my power badly
so i think unfortunately gary nelson may have been a victim of that power so i might just be talking
over my ass here but i think i'm probably right in fact i think you can watch a whole lot of stallone
movies including probably even the last rambo last blood and feel that it's kind of pure sylvester
stallone right but hey that's for another episode so for some reason they got bruce malmoth
and for some reason he couldn't make the first day of shooting hence stallone took over and directed
the exciting subway chase sequence and this caused some problems with the director's guild of america
as one of the rules that's not interesting enough for me to get into but at the end of
the day they gave stone a pass and all was well in graceland malmoth eventually got there and
off to the races they went i actually heard there was quite a lot of conflict between stallone and
rutger howard during the shoot ward has it that a stunt that saw rooker pulled backwards by a
cable to simulate being shot while the cable was yanked so hard that it strained his back
and when rutger learned that it was stallone that gave the work to have the cable pulled that hard
sporting my theory that stallone may have been directing the feud began
gossip aside stallone addressed the film in a 1993 interview and took the time to give
rutger some well-earned props the film was a little bit ahead of its time that it was
dealing with urban terrorism now with the world trade center it's happening at the time people
couldn't relate to it the studio didn't believe in it rutger hauer's performance held it together
and he was an excellent film so regardless of any problems that they had on the set
it's all love baby it's all love and one aspect of a film that i particularly enjoyed
was its thrilling action scenes and its tense practical stunts i mean there's an epic chase
scene that starts at a nightclub where they're playing rolling stones brown sugar
and goes out through a construction site and then they zoom through a subway tunnel
and end on a freaking moving train car and it's simply sublime that is one hell of a well shot and
slickly edited action set piece stunt wise maybe it's because all i see is cgi these days which
diminishes the sense of danger but nothing hits my spot like witnessing a real explosion in a film
they just packed so much more punch than that cgi [ __ ] the stunt highlight though is the part that
saw sloan being winched up the roosevelt island tramway cable car it seriously had me chewing my
kibbles and bits the scene was even tenser due to the fact that it was so obviously stallone doing
the actual stunt and that's not bad for a guy with a mortal fear of heights something he would face
once again down the road when making cliffhanger but again that's for another episode stallone had
this to say to any cool news about his mandance with the cable car sequence hanging from the cable
car was probably one of the most dangerous stunts i was asked to perform because it was untested
and i was asked to hold a folding gerber knife in my hand so that if the cable were to snap
and i survived the 230 foot falling to the beast river with its ice-cold eight mile an hour current
i could potentially cut myself free from the harness because the cable
went stretched out weighed more than 300 pounds i tell you this because it's so stupid to believe
that i would survive hitting the water so to go even beyond that is absurd i mean
slow man has got some balls gotta respect it because you wouldn't get me doing that stunt
after the shoot post-production kicked in and it echoed the filming in terms of chaos the original
cut of the movie was almost two and a half hours long and loads of violence was cut out by the mpaa
the studio shaved the film down to a lean one hour and 39 minutes as they wanted a pretty fast-paced
film it should be said though that stallone had a hand in re-editing the film and yes the
man as i said was all over this one sadly lots of character development was lost mostly having to do
with our two leads deacon wolfgar plus the women in the film the talented lindsay wagner who was
actually the bionic woman at the time and purse is combative and do you recognize purse's combat
remember the bald girl in star trek the motion picture aileah yeah that's purses combata with
hair she died a few years ago i love purses combat in this movie wagner's role in particular though
got axed in the cutting room with her playing deak's strange lover and it's diminished
so badly that i think it actually really hurts the film as it is she's basically a cameo they make a
big deal about her character but you see her once and then never again it's a shame that there's not
an uncut version of the film out there because i'd love to tackle it the wacky editing in the
film is especially notable during the big climax where stallone is pumping lead into wolfgard and
the cutting is so strange because apparently the ending out taxi drivered scorsese in terms
of being ultra violent yes stallone was having his taxi driver moment and apparently it was a
gory bloodbath but alas has been lost the time i know that a lot of dvd companies have tried to
find the missing footage but they never could so how is the final product i think it plays
remarkably well but there are some elements of the film that are touch dated and don't really work
for one thing the keith emerson score is on and off sometimes it's really good and sometimes
it's really bad but i think the drastic recutting of the film did not help at all in this respect
i got a couple of unintentional laughs watching this movie for instance a bearded wolfgar is
supposed to be getting a facelift but he comes out looking like kind of a shaved rooker hauler right
so i guess that's all the plastic surgeon did shaved off his beard i mean that makes you laugh
i also find it kind of funny the scenes where they're cutting back and forth between wolfgard
planning terrorist attacks and hitting new york and the cops sitting through what had to be one of
the longest anti-terrorist slideshows ever created by man try to stay with me everybody one that was
filled with useless information at that it went on for days and days and days or so it seemed
something to add to the sewell it means we can't catch him if we're sitting in here
guys there's a psycho out there blowing [ __ ] up get out of there go to work finally to say the
plot turns were predictable by today's standards would be a bit of an understatement you can't
help but see it all coming on that though the film is pretty gripping from beginning to end
slona is at his most intense and the chemistry shares with billy d williams
is simply excellent you know when that bus gets to the airport he's going to waste you
why are you always trying to cheer me up i wish billy williams had been in the film more but
the two of them really seem to be comfortable together and unbelievable as cops many of the
set pieces have been engraved in my feeble mind since i first saw the movie and that's a pretty
good sign there's the cable car scene the extended chase and the nightclub scene which depending on
the version you see either has phony music that was replaced on home video or has a bunch of hit
songs like brown sugar by the rolling stones back in the day universal didn't always lock
down their music rights so home video versions of the movies would often feature different
soundtracks nighthawks was one of those films oh and of course you also have stallone in drag
not once but twice and sloane wow doesn't he look beautiful in a blonde wig complete with a beard
honestly you can't go wrong with old new york as a location for a grimy cop flick
there's just some bleak charm and energy that no green screen work can capture i mean you
feel like sly and the rest of the cast must have been hit in studio 54 after they called raps right
new york where else plus there's all kinds of really cool character actors in this film
including joe spinel who showed up in a lot of stallone movies at the time and nigel davenport
as the british cop who's teaching them all about wolfgar if you see something kind of peculiar in
nigel davenport's stare it's the fact that he only had one eye one of them was glass
shack overall the film was a fairly modest financial success it only cost five million
dollars to make but it grossed 14.9 million dollars in north america and another five million
dollars abroad their critical reaction to this movie was actually pretty good and what they're
actually doing with the movie now is apparently remaking it as a limited series yes we recently
broke the story on joeblow.com that yes indeed they are making a nighthawks limited series
eight episodes and that frank grillo is going to be playing deep da silva and that stallone
would be directing all the episodes and would also be in it now i don't know who he's playing
it'd be really cool if he played wolfgard but i don't think stallone's gonna go down that road
so nighthawks in the end gets about 7 out of 10 stallones from yours truly and i really recommend
you give it a look it's definitely one of stallone's more obscure films especially from that
weird period between rocky 2 and rocky 3 where you know he was doing lots of strange movies like
playing soccer in victory i really like this one i think it's kind of a lost classic to some extent
so check it out you could find it on blu-ray from shout factory in a pretty nice remaster if
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