Streets Of Fire (1984, Dir. Walter Hill)
Synopsis:
Rock singer Ellen Aim (Diane Lane) is kidnapped by a vicious gang of bikers called The Bombers led by the psychotic Raven Shaddock (Willem Dafoe), when she plays a concert in her old neighborhood. Local bar owner Reva (Deborah Van Valkenburgh) contacts her brother Tom (Michael Paré), a local tough guy, who used to be Ellen’s boyfriend back in the day and persuades him to rescue Ellen. Surrounded by a motley crew of helpers including feisty former soldier, McCoy (Amy Madigan) and Ellen’s Manager, Billy Fish (Rick Moranis), sneaks into the Bombers’ neighborhood and snatches Ellen back. However, he soon discovers that getting there and grabbing her back was the easy part. Getting home in one piece and surviving Raven’s revenge might be a lot tougher.
To my recollection, I was about 12 or 13 when I first caught this bizarre hybrid of action thriller and musical on tv late one night, it’s mixture of clichés appealing to my adolescent mind. Make no mistake, this film is riddled with clichés, but it’s the way in which it borrows them from a bunch of different genres (the biker movie, the film noir, the western, the rock and roll musical etc.) and mashes them up together, which makes this interesting despite the thinly written characters and largely predictable plot.
To me, there’s a parallel here with another underrated 80s oddity that I love: Rumblefish. Both films hark back to the 50s in their look and feel, despite being set in the 80s (Streets Of Fire does at least acknowledge this anomaly by prefacing the film with the title card: “Another time, another place”) and Diane Lane appears in both of them along with (in this film) whole host of now familiar faces: Rick Moranis, Amy Madigan , Willem Dafoe, Rick Rossovich, Mykelti Williamson, Bill Paxton and Ed Begley Jr.
The main lead, Michael Paré, was at the peak of his two year popularity and from this, it’s pretty clear why his career as Hollywood leading man faltered after a time: He’s a little too young and baby-faced to really play the hard-boiled leading man convincingly, though he’s even worse in scenes where he needs to display any real emotion. Perhaps because of this, Hill wisely decides to keep those sort of scenes to minimum; though that could just as easily be because, as a director, he has no flair for them either. (Just take a look at the scenes between Nick Nolte and Annette O’Toole in 48 Hrs to get a feel for what I mean: women are portrayed as burdens on the leading men, always nagging them to be more sensitive and open towards them, which is presented as a ‘bad thing’) As a result, Paré is mostly expected to look brooding and alternatively mumble or shout aggressively, making him a throughly unsympathetic lead. Worse, still (and probably in a homage to the sort of John Wayne — style machismo that Hill thinks is cool) in the scene where he’s trying to get Lane’s character to leave town without him — he knocks her out with a punch! Something that shocked my son when I watched the film with my kids for the first time, recently. “Why would he do that?” He asked me, “Boys don’t hit girls — everybody knows that!” (I love this kid!). Fortunately, that was the only morally dubious moment in a movie he and his sister otherwise throughly enjoyed. Equally, Paré is surrounded by enough interesting performances that you can (just about) enjoy the film despite his soulless and wooden central performance.
Willem Dafoe was already making a name for himself as a charismatic bad guy in Hollywood when this was released. The following year he would memorably play the psychotic forger, Rick Masters in William Friedkin’s superb 80s crime thriller: To Live And Die In L.A. and I believe you can see the blueprint for that role in his performance here, as the menacing biker leader. Just look at the glee in his eyes when he announces to Paré’s character that he’s “brought along something special” for their fight, before producing two shiny sledgehammers for them to duel with or the animal howl he utters, as he lunges at Paré. It’s just the right sort of lunatic performance this film needs and makes what would otherwise be a rather two dimensional bad guy, genuinely interesting and intimidating. It’s no wonder he soon became a Hollywood casting favorite, whenever they needed an unhinged antagonist.
This was a very early role for Diane Lane and she does as much with it as she can, performing the musical numbers with gusto and her few dialogue scenes well — but she’s not given much to do other than sing and look pretty.
It’s interesting to see Rick Moranis playing something other than the nerdy characters he usually portrays as the wheedling and obnoxious manager, Billy Fish. I remember reading an article about him in Empire magazine, saying he’d had a fairly miserable time making the film. Regardless, he gives an excellent performance here anyway and his character provides a memorable foil for both Paré and Madison to play off against. Equally good in his small role as bartender, Clyde, is the late, great Bill Paxton, who hadn’t had much Hollywood experience at the time other than his small role in the first Terminator film. His big breakout roles in Aliens and Near Dark were still a few years off, but here he gives a prototype version of the sort of nervy loudmouth role he would become famous for. Amy Madison is also good as tough ex soldier McCoy, despite some terribly cliched dialogue, as is Richard Lawson as the Police captain, Deborah Van Valkenburgh as Cody’s sympathetic sister and Mykelti Williamson, Robert Townsend, Stoney Jackson and (the fabulously named) Grand Bush as singing group The Sorels are superb and provide some nice moments of comic relief.
There’s no denying that it’s well put together film, with superb night cinematography from Hill’s regular collaborator, Andrew J. Lazlo and sharp editing from the team headed by James Coblentz — I particularly the way the scenes cross fade into one another like someone scratching a razor blade across the picture and the original score by Ry Cooder, is every bit as good as those he created for Paris, Texas or Hill’s earlier film: Southern Comfort. As for the songs by Jim Steinman — they sound very similar those he wrote for Bat Out Of Hell. I’m not a huge fan of either him or Meatloaf, but for the most part they’re very effective here, particularly in combination with the editing.
Ultimately, this is the very definition of a cult film — one that mixes and matches genres, creating something new in the process. To me, whilst the mixture doesn’t always blend smoothly, there’s still enough little moments here to hold one’s attention.
