How do I describe this movie? It's kind of like Walter Hill made his own Sin City in the early/mid 80's, but also as a rock and roll (semi) musical with throwbacks to the 1950's while at the same time still being very, very 80's. Those throwbacks are in the music somewhat too via a score by Ry Cooder (and keep in mind this was the same year he also scored Paris, Texas, just think about the versatility for that), and of course with the biker imagery and rockabilly aesthetic. And the movie has quite the cast - Diane Lane as a Pat Benatar-ish singer in one of her early roles; Rick Moranis as the jerkish manager (and Lane's character's boyfriend, for reasons); Willem Dafoe as... hell, it's Williem Dafoe as a villain in the 80's, isn't it a full price ticket already?
I think the strongest thing about this is Hill's vision as a director. This is clearly a personal movie for him, though it also acts as like the B-side to the A-side of The Warriors: that movie was better put together and more cohesive (the mission at the core was something to follow easier as it was over a night), but they both come from the same wild comic book look and feel. The locations this is set in (somewhat in Chicago and somewhat in Los Angeles) are designed to be in the past and the future, but it's to the point where you can't distinguish one from the other. That's good, and it makes it into this wonderful alternate reality where pop culture tropes, from the diner to the rock club to the down and dirty biker bar with the Zoot-Suit-Riot type of dance to the way everyone dresses, it makes for a visually unique spectacle. Oh, and Hill is solid here at directing action and violence, which you'd expect coming from the 79 movie and others he's done.
Even the star, Michael Pare as Tom Cody(and don't worry you won't forget that name the number of times its said, first and last name), feels like he's ripped from the pages not from comics of the 80's (though maybe there's some Frank Miller scraped off on him unintentionally) but from a pulp comic from the *50's*. So when he has Pare act the way he does here - often with stoic looks and without really doing much in the way of, you know, anything but declarative statements and orders - I kind of like it because it fits the feel of the whole place. Is it the *best* actor that could've been in the role? No, but he does the best with it that he can.
Where it falters is in portions of the script. The first half has a clear trajectory because it involves Tom Cody getting a message from his sister to come back to save his ex-girlfriend (Lane's Ellen Aim) from the clutches of the biker Dafoe and his gang to his hometown (he's been away at the army following, I suppose in this world, juvenile delinquency). This part is fun and engaging, albeit with Moranis committing to a role that's obnoxious, and I'm not sure if it's his performance or the character. But once this mission is done the movie kind of flounders on what we can expect to happen: the Dafoe biker will come back to get the girl (and Dafoe is maybe the best part of the movie to be fair so any screen time he gets is welcome), and that Pare and Lane will bicker back and forth with Moranis in the middle. Indeed a lot of the dialog the characters get to say, even Amy Madigan in a well acted tough guy role given to a woman (a nice decision on Hill's part), is rather nasty and just full of mean spirit.
Does that make the movie bad? Not all of it, but Streets of Fire is an experience that ends up waxing and waning for me, to the point where in the second half I wondered if it was a *good* movie or more of a guilty pleasure trip into a Hollywood director's headspace where he practically had carte-blanche (post 48 Hours). And along with the flaws in the story there's a reliance on ridiculously fast editing to the point where you realize this is what critics meant at the time when they went after movies with "MTV style editing". And Hill and his editor have a lot of good decisions here, but the montages make it dated in such a way that I was reminded of Purple Rain from the same year, only FASTER!
With all this said, I did have fun with Streets of Fire, from Cooder's fantastic score to the performances that worked to the emotional finale that just reaches out and doesn't give a flying f*** about what you think of it going into camp. The logical part of my brain can pick it apart till the cows come home, but as far as it being an experience to soak in all of the full on CINEMATIC tropes it works.
I think the strongest thing about this is Hill's vision as a director. This is clearly a personal movie for him, though it also acts as like the B-side to the A-side of The Warriors: that movie was better put together and more cohesive (the mission at the core was something to follow easier as it was over a night), but they both come from the same wild comic book look and feel. The locations this is set in (somewhat in Chicago and somewhat in Los Angeles) are designed to be in the past and the future, but it's to the point where you can't distinguish one from the other. That's good, and it makes it into this wonderful alternate reality where pop culture tropes, from the diner to the rock club to the down and dirty biker bar with the Zoot-Suit-Riot type of dance to the way everyone dresses, it makes for a visually unique spectacle. Oh, and Hill is solid here at directing action and violence, which you'd expect coming from the 79 movie and others he's done.
Even the star, Michael Pare as Tom Cody(and don't worry you won't forget that name the number of times its said, first and last name), feels like he's ripped from the pages not from comics of the 80's (though maybe there's some Frank Miller scraped off on him unintentionally) but from a pulp comic from the *50's*. So when he has Pare act the way he does here - often with stoic looks and without really doing much in the way of, you know, anything but declarative statements and orders - I kind of like it because it fits the feel of the whole place. Is it the *best* actor that could've been in the role? No, but he does the best with it that he can.
Where it falters is in portions of the script. The first half has a clear trajectory because it involves Tom Cody getting a message from his sister to come back to save his ex-girlfriend (Lane's Ellen Aim) from the clutches of the biker Dafoe and his gang to his hometown (he's been away at the army following, I suppose in this world, juvenile delinquency). This part is fun and engaging, albeit with Moranis committing to a role that's obnoxious, and I'm not sure if it's his performance or the character. But once this mission is done the movie kind of flounders on what we can expect to happen: the Dafoe biker will come back to get the girl (and Dafoe is maybe the best part of the movie to be fair so any screen time he gets is welcome), and that Pare and Lane will bicker back and forth with Moranis in the middle. Indeed a lot of the dialog the characters get to say, even Amy Madigan in a well acted tough guy role given to a woman (a nice decision on Hill's part), is rather nasty and just full of mean spirit.
Does that make the movie bad? Not all of it, but Streets of Fire is an experience that ends up waxing and waning for me, to the point where in the second half I wondered if it was a *good* movie or more of a guilty pleasure trip into a Hollywood director's headspace where he practically had carte-blanche (post 48 Hours). And along with the flaws in the story there's a reliance on ridiculously fast editing to the point where you realize this is what critics meant at the time when they went after movies with "MTV style editing". And Hill and his editor have a lot of good decisions here, but the montages make it dated in such a way that I was reminded of Purple Rain from the same year, only FASTER!
With all this said, I did have fun with Streets of Fire, from Cooder's fantastic score to the performances that worked to the emotional finale that just reaches out and doesn't give a flying f*** about what you think of it going into camp. The logical part of my brain can pick it apart till the cows come home, but as far as it being an experience to soak in all of the full on CINEMATIC tropes it works.