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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i'm gonna kill that son of my [ __ ] you're [  __ ] dead and killing [ __ ] you're [ __ ] dead

so

you