Two New York cops against a terrorist
In Nighthawks, released in 1981 and directed by Bruce Malmuth, Sylvester Stallone plays Deke DaSilva, a New York City police detective who, with his partner Matthew Fox, played by Billy Dee Williams, is transferred to a new anti-terrorist unit after a violent incident on the street. The film is one of the earliest Hollywood thrillers to centre on international terrorism in an American city, and it feels, in retrospect, prescient and unsettling. The villain is Wulfgar, played by Rutger Hauer in his American film debut, a ruthless European terrorist who bombs a London department store and then travels to New York to continue his campaign. DaSilva and Fox are street cops, not spies, and the film’s tension comes from that mismatch: ordinary detectives, used to muggers and drug dealers, suddenly facing an enemy who thinks in terms of headlines, embassies, and mass casualties.
Stallone plays DaSilva with a weary, working-class humour that sets him apart from his Rocky and Rambo personas. DaSilva is divorced, he lives in a small apartment, he argues with his ex-wife, and he does his job with a mixture of competence and cynicism. He is not a superhero, and he does not want to be a hero at all. When he is assigned to the anti-terrorist squad, he resists the training, the jargon, and the federal agents who tell him to think like a soldier. His strength is that he knows New York: its streets, its subways, its nightclubs, and its people. The film uses that knowledge beautifully, staging chases through Manhattan, a tense sequence in a disco, and a final confrontation in a cable car high above the city, where DaSilva must stop Wulfgar without endangering civilians. It is a thriller built on place, and Stallone’s grounded performance makes the city feel real.
A thriller ahead of its time
Nighthawks was made at a moment when terrorism was a European news story, associated with groups in Ireland, Germany, and the Middle East, and the idea of a bombing campaign in New York still felt like fiction to American audiences. The film’s screenplay, with contributions from David Shaber and Stallone himself, treats its subject seriously, showing the police learning, slowly and painfully, how a terrorist thinks. Wulfgar is not a cartoon villain. Hauer plays him as a cold, intelligent professional who enjoys the fear he creates, and his scenes, including a chilling sequence in which he prepares explosives in a hotel room while listening to music, are genuinely disturbing. The film also shows the moral ambiguity of counter-terrorism: DaSilva’s unit is given extraordinary powers, and the film asks whether those powers make the city safer or simply create new dangers.
The partnership between DaSilva and Fox is the film’s heart. Williams, fresh from his success in The Empire Strikes Back, brings charm and authority to Fox, and the two detectives’ banter, their loyalty, and their disagreements give the film a warmth that its subject might otherwise deny it. Their relationship is not the buddy-cop comedy of later 1980s films, but a professional friendship between two men who trust each other in dangerous situations. When Fox is wounded, DaSilva’s pursuit of Wulfgar becomes personal, and the final act gains an emotional weight that lifts it above a routine chase. Stallone and Williams work well together, and it is a pity they never reunited in a sequel, as the film’s ending leaves their partnership intact and ready for more.
Production troubles and a cult reputation
Nighthawks had a troubled production, with changes of director and a studio that was unsure how to market a serious thriller about terrorism to an audience expecting another Rocky. It was not a major box-office success on release, and critics were mixed, praising its atmosphere and performances while finding its plot uneven. Over time, however, it has gained a cult reputation among thriller fans, who value its New York location work, its early depiction of urban terrorism, and Hauer’s menacing debut. The film’s action sequences, particularly the cable-car climax, remain effective, and its tone, gritty without being exploitative, feels more modern than many of its contemporaries.
For Stallone, Nighthawks occupies an interesting place between Rocky II and Rocky III, showing him as a contemporary urban hero rather than a boxer or a soldier. DaSilva is a man in a leather jacket and a city he loves, and Stallone plays him with a lightness and a humour that his later action roles would sometimes lose. The film also demonstrates Stallone’s range at the start of the 1980s: in three years he played a boxer, a union leader, a veteran, and a New York detective, each distinct, each grounded in a working life. Nighthawks may not be his most famous film, but it is one of his most interesting, and it deserves to be remembered as more than a footnote.
Why Deke DaSilva endures
Deke DaSilva endures because he is Stallone’s most ordinary hero of the early 1980s, a cop who does not want to be a symbol, only to do his job and go home. In a film about terrorism, that ordinariness is the point: the city is defended not by superheroes but by detectives who know its streets and care about its people. Stallone’s performance, tired, funny, and determined, gives that idea a face, and the film’s New York, shot on location with a documentary eye, gives it a place. For Past Tunes readers, Nighthawks is a thriller that anticipated the anxieties of a later era, and a reminder that Stallone, before he became a global action brand, could play a man who was simply good at his job, in a city that needed him.