Night Hawks (1981)

Price: $1
Year: 1981
Length: 99 mins
Director: Bruce Malmuth (replacing Gary Nelson)
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Billy Dee Williams, Lindsay Wagner, Nigel Davenport, Joe Spinell, Persis Khambatta, Catherine Mary Stewart, and Rutger Hauer as Wulfgar

I always ignored this movie cause I thought its title sucked. It makes me think of Edward Hopper, Tom Waits, Matthew Broderick, Michelle Pfieffer, Rutger Hauer, Cage, and Camu Tao in that order before settling on a mental image of Stallone, which is a pretty horrible rate of recall for my phoney baloney Stalloney mind. Whenever anyone describes anything as being over the top around me I turn my hat around and start crashing trucks into Robert Loggia's house, for gosh sake. But there are only so many Stallone films in the world and I have a standing order to purchase all unseen ones at any given chance regardless of consequence or funds. So Night Hawks was a no brainer.

Fortunately, the movie is much better, weirder, and prescient than its weak title would suggest. For starters, Sylvester Stallone has the typically strong character name DEKE DASILVA. A name so strong that posters for the movie touted him as being "DEKE DASILVA, THE MOST DANGEROUS COP KNOWN TO MAN" despite the fact that this movie is mostly about what a wimpy sour puss DaSilva is up until the final heartgripping moments. Anyway, Billy Dee Williams is his partner, the tragically named Det. Sgt. Matthew Fox; such a step down from being Lando Calrissian to being linked to that dry rag of a Party of Five alum. BDW had good luck with LC initials, bet he wished they had gone with Lacey Chabert instead. Also, we get Rutger Motherfucking Hauer in his American film debut as the awesomely named international super-villain of terror WULFGAR. It is a fucking travesty that this guy has gone from Verhoeven muse status to straight to video after thought, but so it goes. He's great here and really puts this movie OVER The Top and into being pretty decent territory.

So the movie opens with a burly female nurse with an oddly plasticine and motionless face walking down the street in a bad neighborhood as hoods and toughs swarm around her for the easy mugg. But wait, that weird inhuman face was merely a mask being worn by Sylvester Stallone as Deke DaSilva, the cross-dressing Serpico surrogate the 80's demanded and received. Then Billy Dee Williams jumps out from behind a corner and the dastardly creeps of crime have been stifled again. On the other side of the globe, Rutger Hauer with a beard blows up a department store for some terrorist groups or something, but they get mad at him for killing kids and he's all like pfffft. Then he gets found out when he's trying to seduce some co-eds while posing as a college professor, so he gets plastic surgery that consists of shaving his beard and wiping the putty that won Kidman an Oscar off his nose. Then it's off to New York, which is where Deke and Matthew reign, thus setting up them up for a confrontation!

The movie is kinda slow for the first hour or so, but really picks up during this sweet chase scene, which happens to be on Youtube.
Part 1:


Part 2:


I really dig BDW's Superman tee here and the use of Slow Ride by Foghat during the disco dance scene. Was that seriously a disco dance hit? If so, awesome. If badly placed by misguided people working on movie, awesomer. Either way, a bunch of stuff explodes and Wulfgar is all like I'm gonna kill your girlfriend DEKE DASILVA! But just when he gets ready to stab her, she turns around and has Stallone's face and gun in her hand, which is also Stallone's hand now. Thus bringing us back to the drag show from the beginning and being kind of a bummer of an ending cause DaSilva doesn't like killing, it's just his job. Either way, good show. I mean, it ain't COBRA, but it sure as hell is a buttassload better than PARADISE ALLEY. Now I just need to find a copy of F.I.S.T. cause Anthony Kiedis plays Stallone's son in it. Yes. Oh yeah, the hot bald chick from the first Star Trek movie is in this, too. Looks like she's wearing a wig, which makes sense since this is only 1-2 years later. CHECK IT OUT!