Rumble Fish (1983)

Who payed the critics

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

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.

Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish is a gorgeous, star studded look at street hoodlums of the 1950s. It's based on the book by S.E. Hinton, who also wrote The Outsiders, which Coppola adapted as well. This one is a bit of a different animal though. Where one might expect a grounded, topical, straightforward script and narrative, we're instead treated to a lyrical, dense and very almost experimental tone. Characters exude archetypal charisma that is stunningly thrown off balance by the poetic, otherworldly dialogue that's at times almost inaccessible, but always mesmerizing. It's as if The Outsiders went to sleep and had a dream, functioning on a similar yet slightly unconscious plane. Once you get accustomed to such an aesthetic, it's a film to draw you in and give you poetic dreams of your own. A young Matt Dillon plays Rusty Ryan, a naive young upstart with dreams of notoriety in the worn doldrums of his neighbourhood. He lives under the intense reputation of his older brother, known only as The Motorcycle Boy (Mickey Rourke). Rourke is at the peak of his moody blues James Dean phase here, and commands the screen with a laid back abandon and smirking charm. He gets romantically involved with angelic local beauty Patty (young Diane Lane, stunning), and deals with his lovable deadbeat father (Dennis Hopper). The scenes between Hopper, Dillon and Rourke has an easy swing to them, and the three have a lived in dynamic that strengthens their characters, individually and as a group. Rourke is under the suspicious eye of robotic, violent local cop Patterson (William Smith), who is just waiting for him to step out of line. Dillon and his thug pals, including Nicolas Cage, Chris Penn and Vincent Spano, daydream their days away pining for the oft talked about days when gang warfare was commonplace. There's a splendid supporting cast including Laurence Fishburne, Sofia Coppola, Diana Scarwid, and Tom Waits, mumbling sweet existential nothing's to himself in the local diner. The film is shot in wistful black and whites, and exists in a realm of heightened emotions where the characters all seem to be a little larger than life, but nevertheless human. There's a surreality to it though, a free flowing, dreamy vibe of Chrome on asphalt, lazy afternoons and long glances at pretty girls in the window.

Nostalgic Rusty James (Matt Dillon) yearns for the good old days of gang fights and ultra violence in a choking Oklahoma town. Things ain't been the same since brother Motor Cycle Boy (Mickey Rourke) blew town for the coast in search of errant mom. But return he does just in time to avenge a cheap shot by a rival on feisty scrapper Rusty. Together with assorted hanger ons including their drunken old man (Dennis Hopper) MB imparts words of wisdom in a whisper to bro as they meander the dingy streets of long shadows and vice.This was the third of FF Coppola's mediocrities after a spending the 70s making a quartet of classics and while it it does display moments of B&W surrealism and expressionism it drowns itself in pretense and self indulgence even before the arrival of hipster shaman Motorcycle Boy who lays it on thick from a deep state of torpor.The cast is filled with named talent but all over the top. Dillon is outlandishly loutish, O'Rourke in a lugubrious funk while Hopper continues to trip along in one altered state or another and Nicholas Cage sports a pompadour in hue and height somewhere between Elvis and Andy Kaufman's send up of him.Steve Burrum's photography offers up some striking graceful exposition in spurts but eventually lays it on too thick while Dean Tavalouris Ash Can School set design attempts to conjure up a Dante like circle of Hell but instead delivers a cloying purgatory out of Playhouse 90.Coppola's construction is loose ended his dialogue vapid the pace limpid. It is a daring attempt for an old master to be au courant and in tune with the times but Rumble Fish instead of being Jim Jarmusch comes across more like Mickey One on sedatives. It is an unintentional stoic self parody that even Francis forgets to let himself in on.

I watched this movie a long time ago and remember not being terribly impressed from an action standpoint, but re-watching it now I was able to appreciate the artistic side of it more especially in the sound design Mickey Rourke (who looks pretty amazing in this movie and very un-eighties) is colour blind and partially deaf and so the movie is in black and white and has a sound which is artificially reverberant and surreal. There is very little production sound present and the soundtrack has more or less been completely done from scratch like would be expected in an animated movie for example. It's really quite sparse and the results are extremely interesting. The music is also very unusual in a good way, and it's difficult to date the film from the soundtrack Because of the way the movie was made it avoids many of the clichés present in most 80's films and has largely aged really wellWell worth a watch