Streets Of Fire
Has there ever been a more underrated director than Walter Hill? A guy who has made many slam bang action classics peppered with heavy doses of both macho intensity and almost comic book levels of violence and dialogue. Hill is one of those guys for whom style is everything and the script be damned, heāll just film it and edit it and turn it into a pulsating, kinetic work of art anyway. With 1979ās The Warriors, he may have made his ultimate masterpiece, a story about a street gang on the run through a New York City that has never quite existed in real life but was still amazing to watch from the safety of our theatre seats. This 1984 release is almost like a spiritual sequel to that film, billed as a ārock and roll fableā where the setting is āanother timeā¦another placeā but which features throwback elements for which a child of the 1950s like Hill would find to be cool (motorcycles, leather jackets, custom cars, romance) but then he positions it into a period where the actual timeframe seems a bit hazy (and too modern for the 50s themselves) in the same vein as Warriors all the way up to the point where itās almost an alternate universe, but whereas Warriors was set in an alternate version of New York City, this film seemed to be indicating that its setting is actually Chicago (of which very little actual filming on the movie was done there) only to add to the whole āunrealā look of things by literally constructing all the street and city sets on soundstages in Hollywood, jacking the budget up considerably in order to undertake such an endeavor and even making it possible to say that the movie cost so much to make (in 1984 dollars) that there was no way that it would recoup its investment at the box office, which it didnāt, being considered a bomb and killing any plans for a potential action trilogy which would have featured the main character Tom Cody as played in the film by Michael Pare. Pare would later comment on having a tough time during shooting especially when dealing with co star Rick Moranis who was said to have taken a smartass attitude with him from day one causing Pare to use all of his powers of restraint to not lay him out right there on set. Moranis was reportedly miserable too though, not being allowed to improvise during filming which is usually the case when not making comedies as he was normally known for doing. The real star of the movie (and with good reason) is 18 year old Diane Lane (at the peak of her beauty and then some) as Ellen Aim, a female rock n roll star who opens the movie with one of her live performances at the local concert hall and the song (written and produced by famed Meat Loaf collaborator Jim Steinman) is actually pretty good despite the fact that Lane (much like her co star Pare did in Eddie And The Cruisers) just lipsynced her way through the characterās performances even as her amazing stage presence and charisma would have anyone convinced that she could have chosen rock n roll as a second career if she had wanted to. Unfortunately, Lane winds up getting kidnapped onstage during the show by a biker gang led by Willem Dafoe (for which the apparent motivation for the kidnapping seems to be little more than just Dafoe is an obsessed fan of hers). Dafoe and his gang (The Bombers) just plow through the crowd and then rush the stage, security be damned as they punch out her band members and carry her off the stage and out of the building. As a result, her manager / boyfriend (Moranis) winds up hiring a recently returned soldier turned mercenary (Pare) to go rescue her (since the cops donāt seem too concerned and The FBI is nowhere in sight in this pseudo fairy tale setting) even though Moranis has no idea that Pare is her old boyfriend (and one true love) when he hires him on. Pare recruits a tough talking female ex soldier (Amy Madigan, playing it butch but still cute as a button) to be his driver and sidekick while also dragging Moranis along to be his guide as they head into Dafoeās side of town, a biker gang heaven where anything goes and usually does. Now some of the more interesting things about how all of this is presented includes the fact that despite the potential for some pretty rough material, the film is amazingly rated PG and thus completely appropriate for kids to watch even though Hill himself was no stranger to R rated material. The PG rating also adds to the unrealistic nature of the film which in turn heightens the ārock n roll fantasy / comic book come to lifeā element of the enterprise, even including a scene where Pare (after blasting half of the biker gangās motorcycles to pieces and setting fire to most of the buildings in the district) is confronted by a grinning Dafoe who simply tells him that heās going to come looking for both he and Lane to which Pare just smiles back and tells him āIāll be waitingā before riding away. One of the central themes that comes out especially in the second half (and is a good thing here) is the idea behind the meaning of HONOR and how important it is in particular for a guy such as Pare, with the key thing being how he took money from Moranis (Laneās current boyfriend) to use his badass mercenary skills to rescue Lane (his ex girlfriend who still loves him) only for Lane herself (after being rescued) to turn on Pare and say that she hates him for having to be HIRED to rescue her instead of having gone out to save her for free (thus proving that he loves her) and this same concept of honor applies to the final showdown with Dafoe himself, which despite the fact that Dafoe has a large amount of backup henchmen all with guns, the final battle between the two of them will be strictly one on one even if Pare has to bring out all the armed citizens of the city in order to hold Dafoeās men at bay. The film actually boasts a pretty stellar supporting cast in addition to the names already mentioned including Deborah Van Valkenburgh as Pareās humble diner waitress sister, Bill Paxton as a dipsy doodle bartender who gets laid out by Madiganās tough girl in an early scene, punk rock legend Lee Ving as Dafoeās second in command, Robert Townsend and Mykelt Williamson as members of a soul singing group who get caught up in the mayhem, Elizabeth Daily (who reportedly wanted to sing in the movie badly) as a dedicated fan of Laneās who joins up with the group when she stumbles upon them, Ed Begley Jr. as a crazy eyed vagrant who gets paid off for information, and Peter Jason as a corrupt cop who tries to set up the heroes. In terms of who really stands out amongst all this talent, it can be argued that Dafoe steals the show with limited screentime as the constantly grinning villain who has staged this elaborate kidnapping not for ransom or notoriety, but rather to have a bound and ready rape victim to use as a beautiful plaything for himself. And Madiganās tough talking female sidekick (for whom it is unclear whether or not she is literally a lesbian as she is shown talking about an unfaithful ex boyfriend and even tells Pare that she finds him cute even though heās ānot her typeā) is actually pretty appealing with her take no shit attitude while occasionally flashing a smile (itās clear that Pare finds her attractive with their similar backgrounds). But in the end itās really all about Diane Lane practically glowing in the spotlight during her concert performance scenes (and music video clips shown intermittedly throughout the film) even as her Ellen Aim character comes across as being pretty vacuous whenever she is shown interacting with other people and the very concept that she would be ādatingā an obvious twerp like Moranis (even if he is her manager) is just completely ridiculous (Pare even described Moranis as being a āweird looking little guy who couldnāt get laid in a whorehouse with a fistful of fiftiesā). Made during the peak of the MTV / rock music boom, this film might have been an attempt to cash in on that, but its main thrust comes from incorporating the so called āoldschoolā elements into its story, a fusion that does work successfully here for a movie where everything pretty much LOOKS great, and the story / character aspects that do work to its advantage (particularly the meaning of honor and the rekindling of lost love) work pretty damn well to overshadow any flaws the script might have had even if the box office failure on its initial release would relegate it to the dreaded ācultā status that puts it into the proper perspective of being a movie for its time that by and large still works today in the way that it was intended toā¦
8/10