Blu-Ray Review - Streets Of Fire (1984)

Genre:
Action, Crime
Distributor:
Second Sight
Release Date:
18th November 2013 (UK)
Director:
Walter Hill
Cast:
Michael Paré, Diane Lane, Rick Moranis, Willem Dafoe
Buy:
Streets of Fire [Blu-ray]

Streets of Fire is directed by Walter Hill and is one of the most absurdly 80s films ever made. It was described as “ a rock n’ roll fantasy” in it’s marketing and I guess it is. It’s kind of like The Wanderers but as a dumb 80s action film with horrible musical numbers and none of the substance of The Wanderers. It was a mega flop but has grown to have a cult fan base so much an unofficial sequel was made.

The whole thing is set in this 80s drenched future that is partly 1950s which gives it an interesting aesthetic. The plot is basically this singer Ellen Aim (Diane Lane) gets kidnapped by the Bombers gang lead by Raven Shaddock (Willem Dafoe) and Tom Cody (Michael Paré) must rescue her. The musical numbers are wretchedly 80s that start and bookmark the film that really ruins the good comic book aesthetic of the rest of the film.

Walter Hill is a very fine director who made films like The Warriors, The Driver, Southern Comfort among others. Streets of Fire is certainly one of his lesser films and owes a lot to his previous film The Warriors. It lacks what made that film so good was your cared about the The Warriors gang and wanted them to get back to Coney Island but in this the performance by Michael Paré lacks any real humanity. The film however features a fun campy performance by Willem Dafoe as the main villain and a amusing cameo from the lead singer of seminal L.A punk band Fear Lee Ving as one of Dafoe’s main cronies.

Streets of Fire is perfectly watchable but Walter Hill has made numerous better films but it has a strange 80s charm at times which saves it from being a total disaster. It’s clear to see why it bombed though because it’s simply not that good and to off kilter at times for a mainstream audience. It was suppose to start a franchise but naturally that didn’t happen until recently with the unauthorized sequel with Paré reprising his role. Second Sight as usual has pull out all the stops with the bonus features including a feature length doc and the original EPK.

★★★☆☆

Ian Schultz

Rumble Fish Blu-Ray Review

★★★★★

Rumble Fish was one of many films Francis Ford Coppola did post-One from the Heart to try to recoup the costs of that film. It was made right after Coppola’s previous adaptation of S.E. Hilton novel The Outsiders. It is easily his most artistically satisfying and best since his magnum opus Apocalypse Now. It is also a one of Coppola’s personal 5 favourites of his own work.

It tells the story of Rusty James (played by a very young Matt Dillon, who has starred in 3 of 4 S.E. Hilton adaptations) who is a young but not book-smart but very street-smart teenager who is a member of a rag-tag gang of youths. The film starts with him taking up an offer for a fight with a rival gang leader Biff Wilcox. Matt Dillon’s older brother the legendary Motorcycle Boy (played by a pre-plastic surgery Mickey Rourke) had made a truce between the gangs to stop the rumbles before he left for California. Rusty decides to go ahead with the fight despite this. The Motorcycle Boy mysterious comes back the end of the fight and wins it for his young brother. The Motorcycle Boy like his alcoholic father (Dennis Hopper) is intellectual and has no time for gang fights despite he can knock anyone out easily. The rest of the film plays out like a Greek tragedy and is also about time running out for Motorcycle Boy.

The film’s influences are from Greek Mythology with references to the story of Cassandra but also it’s a film that is very referential to film. The film is very of referential stylistic decisions inspired by German expressionism, surrealism and film noir. The film is almost dreamlike in tone, it’s set in Tulsa, Oklahoma like all of Hilton’s stories but unlike his previous The Outsiders, which is much more like a old fashioned style almost Douglas Sirk esq. in it’s use of colour and obviously constructed sets, not that different from One From the Heart.

It’s shot in high contrast black & white cinematography, which is not that different from the better works of Orson Welles, some shots are reminiscent of his version of The Trial. The film also has very crooked angles, smoke and fog which reminiscent of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. It also has very extreme close-ups at time that are really innovative. The film also has early usage of time-lapse photography inspired by Koyaanisqatsi which Coppola’s Zoetrope distributed. The film also is completely in black and white except 2 scenes near the end which obviously a reference to the Motorcycle Boy’s colour blindness.

The film has a wonderful cast with a wonderful performance by Mickey Rourke at the height of his power in the 80s. Matt Dillon is great as Rusty James and also great supporting roles from Dennis Hopper, Laurence Fishburne (who Coppola discovered in Apocalypse Now), Coppola’s nephew Nicolas Cage, Chris Penn and the always wonderful Tom Waits. Mickey Rourke approached his performance as "an actor who no longer finds his work interesting" which perfectly sums it up. Coppola also gave him books by French absurdist/existentialist writer Albert Camus and based his look partly on a famous photo of him.

The film includes a wonderful score by Stewart Copeland of The Police. It uses streets sounds, strange rhythms, sounds of clocks so in short a very interesting and innovative like the film it’s in. It also features a wonderful commissioned song for the film by Stan Ridgway of Wall of Voodoo, which is probably my favourite song written specifically for a film.

Rumble Fish is hands down Coppola’s most underrated and misunderstood film, which has a lot more depth than it was given credit during it’s first run. It has been luckily re-evaluated over the subsequent years. I consider it his 2nd best film behind Apocalypse Now and yes that includes Godfather 1 and 2. It’s a strange stylistic film that is unlike any other film with some great performances. It has been recently added to Masters of Cinema range by Eureka Entertainment and rightly so.

Ian Schultz

Rating:18
UK BD (Re) Release: 27th August 2012
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Cast: Matt Dillon, Mickey Rourke, Diane Lane, Dennis Hopper, Nicolas Cage