Rico & Jessica's Thoughts: Nighthawks (2019)
Rico Albarracin: I am not familiar with Chace Crawford. Let me take that back—I knew the name and I knew the face, but I was not familiar with his work, although he’s been on hit shows Gossip Girls and Glee. So when I saw that he was starring in a new movie, I was intrigued to see what it was that all my friends were talking about all those years ago.
Nighthawks stars Crawford as Stan, an aspiring writer who lives in a small room with his finance-bro housemate Chad (Kevin Zegers, you know, the kid from Air Bud). When Stan agrees to play wingman to Chad, they begin a promising night of classic New York parties and debauchery and, at least for Chad, exploring the dating scene, getting out there—that is, until the night takes a left turn and Stan becomes entangled with an elite band of millennials known as the Nighthawks.
Rico: This movie has no idea what it wanted to be. Is it a thriller? Is it a look at the New York dating scene among socialites? Is it a commentary on millennial culture? “Why not all of the above?!” the movie seems to have said. There are smart ideas sprinkled throughout the movie, but none of them are explored to a satisfactory end.
Jessica Firpi: I was intrigued by the build up of the night: Chad leaving the party with the seemingly angelic Caroline, and then encountering this perfectly posed, “diverse” group of what looks like upper-crust millennials. With the bizarre level of intense conversation and pretentious combos of SAT word-laden jargon, it felt like Chad was tumbling down the rabbit hole (Caroline being the white rabbit in this scenario). But alas, the movie didn’t deliver on its promise of Wonderland.
Rico: If the movie wanted to explore the lives of socialites living in New York City, it can show how entitled this part of society behaves and the effects of trying to maintain that status. If the movie wanted to look at how millennials view the world, in the way the movie looks back at the group known as the Nighthawks, maybe there can be something interesting.
Jessica: But the film stumbles with choosing its adventure. Is the movie’s protagonist Chad, with his possible guilt over possibly raping a girl at a college frat party? Or is the movie about the Nighthawks, with their odd collection of superpowers (musicians and entrepreneurs and ass holes welcome!)? I don’t think it’s clear at all, and the problem was made worse when the Nighthawks try to muscle a confession out of a nearly unconscious Chad and Chad busts out with strangely coherent narration covering a ton of exposition about the inception of the Nighthawks. It made zero sense.
Rico: I think the biggest problem this movie has is character motivation. You never truly understand what is motivating certain characters to behave or act in a certain way. There’s the leader of the Nighthawks, Trey (Max Sheldon), who expounds in almost prophetic style speak that he wants to establish himself as a world influencer, yet we don’t know what that means because the plot never lets us know what they want to do with the band. And when I say “band,” I mean an actual musical group because this movie decides to explain that the Nighthawks were a musical group with ambitions for world domination? Unfortunately, it is not clear who wants what and why.
Jessica: I think my favorite part of the movie was when Chad, finally free from the clutches of the Nighthawks because he’s not the rapist! (in Maury voice), says through voiceover “She got her closure, and I got mine.” I’m sorry, what the hell kind of closure did Chad need? He wasn’t the one raped, and it seemed like for the majority of the movie he didn’t know Alison was raped either! How is this white dude able to insert himself into an emotional saga that wasn’t his own?
Rico: None of the acting was very good. People stood out for the wrong reasons, whether it was because they were giving a sense of gravitas to a terrible line they were saying or they played very clichéd versions of stereotypes. There was nothing for me to enjoy or to latch onto.
Did we like this movie? No. There’s just too much trying to go on, and the movie has no way of resolving any of its plot points cohesively or satisfyingly. Despite its very fine looks (i.e., color grading, cinematography, and Chase Crawford), the movie changes tone so much throughout that we felt like we had whiplash at the end.
Nighthawks is available on DVD and Blu-ray and for sale and rental on iTunes, Prime Video, and Google Play.
Rico gave the movie a score of 1/5 stars. Jessica gave the movie a score of 1.5/5 stars.
For more reviews, check out Deep Focus