Saturday, April 11, 1981

JAY SCOTT

BY JAY SCOTT NIGHTHAWKS (at the Hyland), a cops 'n' robbers thriller with terrorists where the robbers should be and cops as counter-terrorists, has a dirty job to do and does it. That is not an endorsement. Thumbscrews and cattle prods are real good at what they do, too.


The boogeyman of Nighthawks is Wulfgar (Rutger Hauer), an international freelance terrorist - Billy the Kid on a Nansen passport - trying to prove he is still competent. Nighthawks is full of people trying to prove they are competent and/or versatile. Sylvester Stallone, as one of the New York cops recruited into the counter-terrorist club, is trying to prove that he can do something other than Rocky Balboa (in beard, specs and shiny hair with lots of body, he does a passable road-show Al Pacino).

Billy Dee Williams, his sidekick, is trying to prove he is more than just a photogenic face (in pursuit of said proof, he allows said face to be sliced by a switchblade). Persis Khambatta, a jet-set terrorist accomplice, is trying to prove she can act with a head of hair (she was the bald sex symbol of Star Trek). And Lindsay Wagner, Stallone's estranged wife, is trying to prove that her days as the bionic broad are truly over (she does a not-bad Jane Fonda).

Like Straw Dogs and Death Wish, Nighthawks, directed by Bruce Malmuth from a screenplay by David Shaber, is out to prove that it takes a guts and brains to kill. When the S.W.A.T.-inspired brigade - dubbed A.T.A.C., for Anti-Terrorist Action Command - is formed, the Interpol organizer (Nigel Davenport) informs his recruits that, because they know "the local ratholes," they will be "indoctrinated in counter-terrorist techniques." (That means: bigger and better ways to kill.) This is mandatory, he continues, because there is "a serious lack of ruthlessness on the part of the police." (Let's call Nighthawks contemporary science fiction.) The "lack of ruthlessness" can be attributed to the fact that cops are hung up on "police-public relations, human rights and civil rights." (If they could just learn by example: Hitler, Genghis Khan . . .) "Hesitation kills. Hesitation must be removed from the policeman." (What we need are more knee-jerk killers.) "To combat violence you need greater violence." (Take that, Mahatma Gandhi.) The boys in the brigade are left behind when Wulfgar (the Dutch actor, Rutger Hauer, is unknown in North America, so he has nothing to prove) decides to make the cop played by Stallone his personal nemesis - Wulfgar knows top billing when he sees it. Stallone, perky in his peaked cap embroidered with the acronym A.T.A.C. (why doesn't Wulfgar get a hat that says T.E.R.R.O.R.?), has been picked out because, Viet vet that he is, he is learning how Wulfgar, whom he refers to mostly as "the son of a bitch," thinks.

To win, Stallone has to enter into Wulfgar's exotic mind; when Stallone talks of his assignment, we get the impression that finding Wulf-gar's heart of darkness will be something like skipping into the Lincoln Tunnel during a power failure.

But we're never in doubt that old Sly Stallone will emerge from the other side. Because, Nighthawks tells us, it takes a man to kill a man, and a man is sometimes a bigger man - a better man - for having killed a man. That theme could probably sell cigarets ("It takes man to kill a man, and it takes a killer to smoke Slaughters"). They aren't good for you, either.