Reception
Despite receiving good reviews, including one from Variety, Nighthawks did not become a big commercial success, even though it did recover its $5 million budget in both US and foreign markets. It grossed USD $14.9 million in North America and $5 million in the rest of the world for a worldwide total of $19.9 million. In her review for the New York Times, Janet Maslin praised Hauer's performance: "Mr. Hauer's terrorist, in particular, is a sharply drawn character who acts as a driving force within the movie's scheme. Sadism and bloodlessness are his only identifiable characteristics, and yet he behaves memorably wherever he goes". Time magazine's Richard Schickel wrote, "Nighthawks is so moronically written and directed, so entirely without wit or novelty, that there is plenty of time to wonder about its many missing explanations". In his review for the Globe and Mail, Jay Scott felt that the film, "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". Newsweek magazine's Jack Kroll wrote, "This is one of those films that isn't a film but some repulsively complicated business deal". In his review for the Washington Post, Gary Arnold described the film as "an aggressively shallow police thriller pitting New York undercover cops against international terrorists, suggests what The Day of the Jackal might have looked like if filmed by the producers of Baretta. In order to facilitate a grandstanding, harebrained heroic role assigned to Sylvester Stallone, the filmmakers brush off every opportunity for intelligent dramatization and authentic suspense that the plot would seem to possess".
Stallone says of the film now, "At the time, people couldn't relate to it, and the studio (Universal) didn't believe in it".
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