Rumble Fish

After hearing such rave reviews, I really was excited to see Francis Ford Coppola's indie classic 'Rumble Fish'. The film was shot in black and white and it had an expansive cast of talented actors including Matt Dillon, Mickey Rourke, Dennis Hopper, Diane Lane, Laurence Fishburne, Tom Waits and Nicolas Cage. I enjoyed Francis Ford Coppola's other films like Apocalypse Now and of course The Godfather Parts I, II & III. From what I heard it was filmed kind of like this year's smash hit 'Sin City' ('Rumble Fish' was black & white but with dashes of color) only on a smaller scale. I rented this indie sensation when I was on vacation because they had it in the hotel video store. I couldn't find it in the Blockbusters in Arizona (where I live) and my portable DVD player was acting up so I couldn't view the DVDs I brought a long with me for the trip. It may have been just fate that I got the opportunity to view Coppola's 'Rumble Fish', definitely one of the most, if not the most inventive motion pictures I ever gazed my eyes upon.

The film is set in a 1950s - 1970s setting. With it's black & white color and just the way the film is presented it gives the audience a feel of the old 1930s James Cagney crime noir flicks. It follows a young and dumb hoodlum named Rusty James (Matt Dillon), whose the leader of one of the two gangs in town. After a huge rumble played out like a West Side Story scene from hell, Rusty is left hurt real bad when the opposing gang leader stabbed him in the gut with a switchblade. Coming to Rusty James' rescue is his older brother, The Motorcycle Boy (Mickey Rourke) who hasn't shown his face in town for a year after disappearing to California. The Motorcycle Boy helps his younger brother out, and eventually starts to hang around the neighborhood more. From there, the plot follows the two re-united brothers as they hang around the streets and cause trouble, while the Motorcycle Boy tries to teach his less then intelligent brother the meaning of life. Dennis Hopper stars as Rusty James and the Motorcyle Boy's dad, Diane Lane stars as Rusty James' sweet friend, Tom Waits stars as the grill master in the town's diner, and Chris Penn, Laurence Fishburne and a young Nicolas Cage are featured as some of Rusty James' gang buddies.

First of all, I adored the way 'Rumble Fish' was shot. With his extraordinary talent, director Francis Ford Coppola really creates a thing of beauty and opulence with 'Rumble Fish'. The only real downside of this picture is that the plot drags entirely too much, and that's pretty bad for a film running only 90 minutes. The writing is mostly good, but 'Rumble Fish' seems to be missing a real plot. The film substitutes hypnotic cinematography and cool scenery for an easy-to-follow plot, which in my opinion is a big mistake. Although this kind of bugs me, 'Rumble Fish' is a good film for the most part. The acting is superb with a engrossing and passionate performance by a very young Matt Dillon and a powerful and carefully layered performance by Mickey Rourke who in my opinion should have gotten an Oscar nod for Best Supporting Actor. Diane Lane is very good in one of her first roles, Dennis Hopper plays the alcoholic clueless dad perfectly and Tom Waits is a pleasure to watch. Nicolas Cage and Laurence Fishburne are also rock solid. If you want to see a film that's really out there and full of likable qualities, I'd recommend picking up 'Rumble Fish' your next stop to the video store. Chances are you'll find something or somethings to love about it. Grade: B

Youth alienation seems to be the obvious theme of this story about a high school kid named Rusty James (Matt Dillon), a big believer in rough, angry neighborhood gangs, and his long-lost older brother who unexpectedly returns. Perhaps at a more subtle level, the story's theme relates to the passage of time, in hours and years, as evidenced by the film's visuals of passing clouds and the presence of clocks in numerous scenes.

The story is thin. Rusty and his "gang" hang out, talk, walk around a lot, get angry, encounter various characters that appear in some scenes, then disappear. Ultimately, the glue that holds the plot together is the relationship between Rusty and his enigmatic, somewhat intellectual older brother, no longer a gang leader, who now functions as Rusty's mentor who over time, wised up. The story's era is unclear.

Casting is okay except for a disconnect between story location and character accents. The setting is supposed to be Oklahoma; yet, most characters, and especially Rusty James, speak with a thick New York accent. Director Francis Ford Coppola made the same mistake in "The Outsiders", using the same location and some of the same actors.

The film was shot in B&W, except for a couple of scenes where aquarium fish appear in red and blue. Overall photography is interesting in that visuals have a look and feel influenced strongly by German Expressionism, and include low-angle, noir lighting, heavy shadows, smoke and fog, and a few weird camera angles. Visuals in many scenes convey a gritty, dingy, urban look.

In the copy I watched, dialogue sounded muffled and hard to understand. Background sounds combined general urban clanking noise with the rhythmic based ticks of a clock and light jazz to create an interesting if perhaps contrived overall soundtrack.

An art film that was not well received by audiences when it came out, "Rumble Fish" would appeal to an art house audience but probably few others. I found the story talky and boring, though the B&W visuals were interesting in a stylized sort of way.

They say art films died out in the '80s, and they also say Francis Ford Coppola sold out after "Apocalypse Now," but this is truthfully his last visionary film. It may not be a flawless masterpiece on the same level as the aforementioned movie or "The Godfather," or even "The Conversation" (one of his absolute best), but it's still very good - beautiful to look at, poetic, and visually stimulating.

It was the second film he released in 1983 adapted from an S.E. Hinton book. His first ("The Outsiders") was cleaner than this. "Rumble Fish" has a lot of violence, a lot of swearing, and a decent amount of sex/nudity. It is the flip side to "The Outsiders"; and in my opinion, the more mature work of the two (although both are very good).

Matt Dillon gives his best performance as Rusty James, a 1950s street punk whose alcoholic father has all but walked out on him, and whose older brother (an enigmatic figure known only as The Motorcycle Boy) has left and moved to California some time ago.

We are led to infer that The Motorcycle Boy was a sort of rebel hero - a type of Robin Hood, as Rusty James says - and the entire town loves him. As a result, Rusty James "can't live up to his brother's reputation...and his brother can't live it down," to quote the film's tagline.

But The Motorcycle Boy returns one day in the form of Mickey Rourke. He rescues his kid brother from a violent underground fight with a group of thugs and takes him back to the safety of their home.

The Motorcycle Boy has come back in order to make amends, one supposes; or at least because he feels as if he has an obligation to see his father and brother again.

Meanwhile, Rusty James - in a desperate intent to match his brother's reputation - continues his downward spiral of street fights and violence, resulting in more than a few bloody brawls.

"Rumble Fish" is displayed in grainy black-and-white, and the soundtrack itself is surreal, often featuring fragments of distorted audio matched with hazy visuals. At first it doesn't seem to make sense, but then it is revealed that The Motorcycle Boy has a hearing problem that comes and goes at random (typically when he is under stress) - and is colorblind, which explains the b&w photography.

This is a great decision by Coppola because it gives the film an authentic feeling; at first, we feel as if we are following Rusty James' plight, but then once we pull back it becomes obvious we are watching through the eyes of The Motorcycle Boy himself. Coppola's experimentation with color in a few shots is something we're only now seeing take form again in movies like "Sin City" (which also featured Rourke). "Schindler's List" had a few moments of color and b&w, too, but it wasn't as frequent.

The performances are excellent. An all-star cast includes not only Dillon and Rourke but also Diane Lane (who was also in "The Outsiders" with Dillon), Dennis Hopper, Diana Scywid, Vincent Spano and Nicolas Cage.

Dillon's performance is key to the film because essentially this is his story, but it's being narrated to a certain effect by The Motorcycle Boy (at least insofar that it's his problems taking form in the narrative) - and Rourke gives a terrific performance. His moody, quiet embodiment of The Motorycle Boy leaves a lasting impression; his character comes across as a somber, reflective and ultimately regretful man who made bad decisions in his past and now wants to protect his brother from the same thing. It is implied that he may even have become a mail hustler on the streets of CA; his persistence to not tell any details of his adventure, and the fact that he sees a photo of himself posing in front of a bike ("taken by a guy in California," he tells his brother) in a magazine, and then asks Rusty James not to tell anyone, could be perceived as such. Or maybe not. It all depends on how far you want to look into it.

"Rumble Fish" may not be Francis Ford Coppola's best film, but it is one of his most sadly underrated movies and is probably worth mentioning in a list of the best films of the 1980s. In a decade where American art-house seemed to be a lost thought, "Rumble Fish" stands out as one of the few.

I saw Rumble Fish in a small a cinema in Dublin when it came out in 1983. It became a cult hit around town and was shown every Monday afternoon for for £1 for months. I bunked off work often to see it as did many people, I got to know. It's hard to say what made it quite so special, god knows I've tried over the years in those party/pub moments when the conversation is flagging and someone asks, 'what is your favourite film?' Obviously they want to know why when you come up with something they've never heard of, hate or are indifferent to. I read Susie Hinton's books afterwards and also sought out the Outsdiders (also from a Hinton novel) which was made at the same time and was a good film with some of the wistful intensity of teenage life so strong in Rumble Fish but was like the straight, conventional brother by comparison. I think Susie Hinton went straight to Coppola's heart and she worked with him on the two films, even appearing in cameo in both. It is amazing to me that her books were marketed as teenage fiction, they are to my mind mature American fiction and transpose beautifully to the screen. The plot is a simple one and necessarily so yet the implications are universal. The style, camera-work, casting and soundtrack work together so well. I don't think that even in the Godfather Coppopla ever got it so right. The dreamy quality of the film, the distorted imagery and the fantastic soundtrack reflect the physical and mental damage suffered by the James family, Rusty's brain damage from one too many rumbles, Dad's alcoholism and the Motorcycle Boys colour blindness, depression and death wish. It's like an elegy for the old west and the constraints of small town life, John Ford meets David Lynch. It also marked the beginning of the end for Zoetrope studios and we'll never know what great movies we lost when that motorcycle gang left town.

Like most who saw this film, I would guess, I was exposed to it in college, and I have to admit much of it went past me at the time. I liked the stark and unusual visuals, and I liked most of the story, but I'd be lying if I said I understood everything that was going on. Not that 'Rumble Fish' is particularly deep, just that in college I wasn't. Viewing the movie with a more mature mind now, I appreciated it much more than I did when I was nineteen.

Based on the S.E. Hinton novel (Coppola also translated 'The Outsiders', which remains remarkable even today for its amazing cast), 'Rumble Fish' follows the story of one Rusty James (Matt Dillon, in full bad-boy mode) stuck in the middle of nowhere (Tulsa, actually), dissatisfied with his life but not really bright enough to know why. His older brother, the Motorcycle Boy (Mickey Rourke, long before he became a punchline), wheels back into town from a long sojourn, and what there is of a plot begins.

Much of this movie is atmosphere, which normally irritates me but for some reason works incredibly well here. The black and white film is actually part of the story, which is in itself unusual, but it complements the storytelling and actually adds depth to the film. Though we see eighties-era cars, some of the movie has an almost fifties-feel to it, and like Rusty James, the viewer is never sure when, or where, he is. The bleak setting of Tulsa only reinforces the sense of both isolation and containment, which is the central theme of the film.

Dillon is very strong here. His seething anger can never really find a way to express itself adequately, and Dillon spends the whole film out of sorts in his own skin, giving a remarkable performance. Diane Lane, whom I suspect was hired for her stunningly good looks, has a smaller role but is very effective as the put-upon Patty. Most of the rest of the young cast – unknowns or relatives or friends of the director at that point in time (Nicolas Cage, Chris Penn, Lawrence Fishburne, Tom Waits, even a very-young Sophia Coppola) are all very, very good. Waits and Fishburne have tiny roles but large presences on screen, and they stick in the viewer's mind even when they aren't there. Dennis Hopper is unusually relaxed and natural as Rusty James' dad (called only Father); sometimes Hopper can get gimmicky or artificial with his acting, but here he is subtle and wholly effective as a drunken shell of a man.

But the standout performance is really Mickey Rourke, reminding us that before he pissed his career away on crappy low-budget films with the likes of Don Johnson, he was actually a decent actor. Rourke imbues the Motorcycle Boy with a wholly different restlessness than Dillon's Rusty, and makes him both compelling and sympathetic. Honestly it helps that Rourke has some of the best lines in the film, most notably one of my favorite quotes from any film: 'You want to lead people, you have to have some place to take 'em.' Motorcycle Boy is also something of a transitional hero, knowing he is damned to live, and die, in this hellish world but making sure the path to redemption (and escape) is secured for his follower (he even says of Rusty, 'His only vice is loyalty.')

'Rumble Fish' is mostly an artsy character piece, the type of film that normally does not appeal to me, but Coppola displays such skill with the material and is so willing to subvert the very conventions of his film so that they further serve the characters and their development that the movie works, and works very well. Though the color tricks betray themselves rather badly on DVD (we were never meant to see this movie this clearly), the film still carries an enormous punch on the small screen as it did on the large. A bleak film that nonetheless carries within a message of hope, that one can escape the cages of one's surroundings if one tries hard enough.