'A Rock & Roll Fable'
Streets of Fire is something of a
cult classic. It was released in
1984 and directed by
Walter Hill, and stars
Michael Parre,
Diane Lane,
Rick Moranis,
Amy Madigan, and
Willem Dafoe.
Tom Cody (Parre) is the classic
anti-hero, a former soldier whose sister calls him home when his
ex, a
minor rock goddess named
Ellen Aim (Lane) is kidnapped by the awesomely
slimy Raven (Dafoe - who dons
rubber overalls for the part). Ellen's manager, Billy Fish (Moranis) hires tom to track her down, unaware of their previous
romantic entanglement.
All this proceeds in a fairly predictable manner - they fight, they
blow things up, they
get the girl, the villains come after the hero, the
villains are summarily dispatched, Cody takes
the next train out of town. It's been compared to a
western, not only because cody is so understated, but due to the presence of other
cowboy movie staples - the cops want him to leave town before the fight, he leaves town after the fight, despite the protestations of Ellen, who, predictably,
wants him back. And there's Fish,
geeky and
anal, who provides an ideal
counterpoint to Tom Cody the
hardass. At one point, a homeless man (
Ed Begley, Jr.) describes Fish thusly: "
Oh you're dumb. And you're short. Real short."
The
peripheral characters introduced throughout the movie do a little to help with the story - Madigan as McCoy, another ex-soldier who reacts violently to any challenge, Bill Paxton as a
bartender who has the misfortune to engage her wrath, the R&B band whose bus the group steals on their way out of '
The Battery' (
the bad part of town where Raven's gang hides out), the ditzy blond
teenage fan who follows Ellen everywhere. But most of the acting is just plain bad and the
cameos contribute little more than
novelty.
The plot is bad. That's not unfair, it's just honest. But it doesn't matter.
Streets of Fire manages to do a brilliant job of portraying the mythic cliches of rock and roll. Nearly the whole film is shot at
night - they used a gigantic tent in shooting the film so they wouldn't have to stop during the day.
Neon reflects off of puddles in the street. Cars are
shiny and smooth and the sets are almost pure 50s iconography. Railroad tracks cut through everything and
biker gangs roam the streets in loud packs.
granted, it's a
B movie, but it's a damned fine one.
..Of course, no good rock
fable is complete without a good rock
soundtrack: