If you're looking for a gritty, pulpy piece of NYC action noir, you can't do better than Nighthawks from 1981. It falls into the same genre of NYC crime movie like The French Connection and The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 -- smart cops, haunted by demons, trying to stop vicious criminals intent on destroying the city.
It stars Sylvester Stallone and Billy Dee Williams -- at the height of their Rocky and Star Wars fame -- as two NYC cops hunting a terrorist who, after bombings and murder in London and Paris, escapes to NYC to continue his rampage. The plot is fairly standard -- the cops do lots of hard detective work, deal with annoying superiors and personal issues, catch a few lucky breaks, and it leads to lots of shooting, chasing, and action.
You don't watch a movie like this for the plot so much as for characters, the action, and ambiance -- and Nighthawks has plenty.
This is also a great NYC movie. It shows a cross-section of life in the city circa 1981. The action moves all over the city -- from the subways to the backstreets to the roofs of buildings, from apartments to brownstones, from the Bronx to Manhattan to Queens to Brooklyn, from high-end department stores to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Roosevelt Island tram (and Roosevelt Island itself), even literally into the East River.
Stalline is at his grizzled best, Williams is both intense and charasmatic, and the movie includes a great supporting cast with the late Joe Spinell (from The Godfather Part II), the late Persis Khambatta (Star Trek: The Motion Picture) and the gorgeous Lindsay Wagner right after the Bionic Woman. There's even a cameo by adult star Jamie Gillis! Most importantly, it stars Rutger Hauer in his American film debut as the scary villan.
This movie is as pulpy NYC as it gets, and a fascinating look back at another city at another time.
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