Movies Like Nighthawks
If you loved Nighthawks's Action and Crime storytelling, these films deliver a similar experience — carefully selected for tone, themes, and emotional depth. Each pick includes where to watch it right now.
★ Top Picks
Brake
A Secret Service Agent is held captive in the trunk of a car and endures high-speed mental and physical torture as terrorists attempt to extract needed information for their sinister plot.
Kill 'em All 2
Phillip and Suzanne are retired from the spy game, living peacefully off the grid. That's until their whereabouts are discovered by Vlad, the vengeful brother of their target from the first film.
No Mercy
An unconventional undercover Chicago cop and his partner are recruited to commit the murder of a New Orleans criminal kingpin.
Righteous Kill
Two veteran New York City detectives work to identify the possible connection between a recent murder and a case they believe they solved years ago; is there a serial killer on the loose, and did they perhaps put the wrong person behind bars?
Twilight
A retired detective accepts a simple task, unaware that it will tear open old, forgotten, but deadly wounds.
The Black Book
After his son is wrongly accused of kidnapping, a deacon who has just lost his wife takes matters into his own hands and fights a crooked police gang to clear him.
Hellhound
Ready to leave his profession behind, Loreno, an assassin, lends help to an old friend, Cetan, and taking one last job in Thailand seeking out a local kingpin. A lapse in judgment means Loreno crosses paths with old colleague Paul.
The Virtuoso
Danger, deception and murder descend upon a sleepy town when a professional assassin accepts a new assignment from his enigmatic boss.
More Movies Like Nighthawks
War
FBI agent Jack Crawford is out for revenge when his partner is killed and all clues point to the mysterious assassin Rogue. But when Rogue turns up years later to take care of some unfinished business, he triggers a violent clash of rival gangs. Will the truth come out before it's too late? And when the dust settles, who will remain standing?
Copycat
An agoraphobic psychologist and a female detective must work together to take down a serial killer who copies serial killers from the past.
The Enforcer
A noir thriller set in Miami, the film follows an enforcer who discovers his femme fatale boss has branched out into cyber sex trafficking, putting a young runaway he’s befriended at risk. He sacrifices everything to save the young girl from the deadly organization he’s spent his life building.
Run All Night
Brooklyn mobster and prolific hit man Jimmy Conlon has seen better days. Longtime best friend of a mob boss, Jimmy is haunted by the sins of his past—as well as a dogged police detective who’s been one step behind Jimmy for 30 years. But when Jimmy’s estranged son becomes a target, Jimmy must make a choice between the crime family he chose and the real family he abandoned long ago. Now, with nowhere safe to turn, Jimmy has just one night to figure out exactly where his loyalties lie and to see if he can finally make things right.
Cleaner
Single father and former cop Tom Cutler has an unusual occupation: he cleans up death scenes. But when he's called in to sterilize a wealthy suburban residence after a brutal shooting, Cutler is shocked to learn he may have unknowingly erased crucial evidence, entangling himself in a dirty criminal cover-up.
White Elephant
An ex-marine enforcer must battle his conscience and code of honor when he is forced to do things for the mob.
A Working Man
Levon Cade left behind a decorated military career in the black ops to live a simple life working construction. But when his boss's daughter, who is like family to him, is taken by human traffickers, his search to bring her home uncovers a world of corruption far greater than he ever could have imagined.
Hostile Takeover
Follows Pete, a professional hitman, as he faces a group of assassins after the boss of a crime syndicate suspects disloyalty due to his attendance at Workaholics Anonymous meetings.
Black Widow
Federal agent Alexandra Barnes believes that Catherine Petersen is a serial killer who marries rich men and then murders them for their money. But since Catherine is seemingly a master of disguise and has multiple identities, Alexandra can't prove anything with conventional detective work. With no other option, she goes undercover, pursuing the same man as Catherine, and hoping that Catherine will slip up and reveal her true identity.
The System
When a young soldier, newly returned from war, gets caught up in a drug bust, he is recruited by the authorities to go undercover in a notoriously dangerous prison in order to figure out what is really going on.
Black Site
A group of officers based in a labyrinthine top-secret prison must fight for their lives against Hatchet, a brilliant and infamous high-value detainee. When he escapes, his mysterious and deadly agenda has far reaching and dire consequences.
God Is a Bullet
Vice detective Bob Hightower finds his ex-wife murdered and daughter kidnapped by a cult. Frustrated by the botched official investigations, he quits the force and infiltrates the cult to hunt down the leader with the help of the cult’s only female victim escapee, Case Hardin.
Why These Movies Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with Nighthawks (1981): Action and Crime themes, similar narrative structure, and comparable emotional depth. NoBadPicks uses a combination of TMDB collaborative filtering, genre matching, and AI analysis to surface films most likely to resonate with fans of Nighthawks.
See full details for Nighthawks (1981)