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

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.

Francis Ford Coppola's most personal film is also one of his best - in its own way just as good as APOCALYPSE NOW and THE GODFATHER films. Those who wonder why Mickey Rourke is so revered by cult film fans need look no further than his almost-hypnotic performance as The Motorcycle Boy. But Matt Dillon is just as good as his younger brother, and when you also have the likes of Nic Cage, Diane Lane, Dennis Hopper, Laurence Fishburne, and Chris Penn in the supporting cast, you know it's a once-in-a-lifetime movie. The look of the film - a sparse black-and-white urban landscape - is perfect, as is Stewart Copeland's atmospheric music. But aside from the visual and aural pyrotechnics, what really singles this out as a bona fide classic is its spot-on portrayal of disaffected youth. When Hopper describes to Dillon how Rourke has simply been "miscast in the play", I still feel shivers running down my spine...

I have to admit having a soft spot for this film as I have for Apocalypse Now, though perhaps Coppola could never quite carry out a truly inventive directing style. His films mostly seemed somehow constrained to an unchallenging format, and avoided the complexity, surrealism or depth so often used to great ends by film directors. Coppola's films will always seem to this author to be part of that distinct class of "Hollywood Films", though some are arguably "really good" Hollywood films.

As often the case with good films, Rumble Fish featured a fantastic collaboration of other great artists. This talent comes together to create something memorable on film which communicates, as few films have, a certain mood or feeling that is perhaps peculiar to the American midwest, especially during the 1980's. Something about the antipathy of growing up in such a vast, apathetic, culturally blank, comfortably mediocre place and attempting to go beyond it or find something in it, like punching your way out of a cardboard box only to find that things seem just as dark and empty on the outside. It should be made clear that this author also comes from that midwest and identifies with this theme, so there is some bias in this review, but this may apply to other "midwestern refugees" as well.

Fans of S.E. Hinton, on who's book the film was based and who co-wrote the screenplay, will appreciate the film, as well as fans of Tom Waits, Stuart Copeland (of the Police and little known project Klark Kent- which closely resembles the soundtrack), Mickey Rourke, or any of the (then) young, up and coming actors like Matt Dillon, Nicolas Cage and Diane Lane.

Rourke is at one of the peaks of his young career here, a cool rebel without a cause type, vaguely reminiscent of young Peter Fonda or James Dean- a striking character. The film has memorable scenes and lines, one of which is Dillon's character saying to the fatalistic older brother- "Motorcycle Boy" played by Rourke, something like- "People would really follow you anywhere, why don't we do something?", to which Rourke responds- "Yeah, they'd probably follow me right down to the river...and jump in."

Similar scenes and numerous references to time passing away seemed to summarize the hopeless stagnation of growing up nowhere and proceeding to go nowhere. Groping in the dark for everything or anything meaningful in the context of a forgotten, lifeless irontown where even the young seem more like ghosts trying desperately to become tangible in some sense, and the middle aged are already on some other world.

Other films that come to mind- James Dean films; "Reckless", another Hollywood film released a year later, with Aidan Quinn (as "Rourke"- coincidence?), and Daryl Hannah, was semi-successful in making the occasional reference to a similar blighted steeltown theme, though overall it was spotty; "Dogs in Space" with Michael Hutchence of INXS was a punk classic, and had some of that "nowhere with style" appeal with an Australian twist; two other 1980's films the author never saw- "Down by Law" and "Rivers Edge" probably fit somewhere in here as well.

Yes, this was an effective, well-acted and visually stimulating art-house movie - the forgotten masterpiece of Francis Ford Coppola. I just recently watched this again and fell in love with it. I was a big fan of S.E. Hinton's writings growing up and this film did it justice. It's interesting that author S.E. Hinton claims that the script to this movie was written "on one of the first personal computers" in less than two weeks. How technology has changed nowadays with Final Draft. 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. Dig this one up again. It's a classic.