A long-standing cult favourite, Walter Hill’s Streets Of Fire is a formalist exercise in the language of movie cliché, a mélange of 1950s and 1980s aesthetics designed to fulfil the director’s boyhood dreams. “Kissing in the rain, neon, trains in the night”… Hill’s list, taken from the original 1984 press kit, lays down the blueprint for an ass-kicking rock ‘n’ roll fable.
Michael Paré stars as lone wolf Tom Cody, an ex-soldier who returns home to save an old flame, pop singer Ellen Aim (Diane Lane), from the Bombers, a leather-clad biker gang lead by a viperish Willem Dafoe. Along for the ride is Ellen’s new beau, a weasel-like manager named Billy Fish (Rick Moranis), and McCoy (Amy Madigan), a fellow soldier of fortune.
Hill’s influences range from the studio built cities of German Expressionism (The Joyless Street) to Japanese biker films (God Speed You! Black Emperor) and Hollywood musicals (West Side Story) via the realist paintings of American artist Edward Hopper (Nighthawks). Streets Of Fire’s blue collar cityscape strikes a balance between the mythic and the hyper-real.
The characters are all stock types, played with relish by a game cast – particularly Paré as the floppy-haired, monosyllabic soldier with a gun slung over his shoulder and quips for every occasion. Moranis has a hoot as the slimy Fish, his performance topped off with a perfectly queasy dickie bow tie.
The plot is ludicrous of course and structurally the film doesn’t hold together, but Streets Of Fire isn’t concerned with narrative – it’s concerned with what happens when an action movie director decides to make the ultimate action movie and realise an ambition with every tool at his disposal. Streets of Fire is oversized, oversexed, cheesy, wild and directed like a silent movie crossed with a rock opera. I defy you not to love it.
Sadly, I also recommend you love it on an old cheap DVD, because this Blu-ray edition is marred by heavy grain and a tinny, distant sound mix.
Extras
The bonus material is solid, with a featurette on the film, Rumble On The Lot: Walter Hill’s ‘Streets Of Fire’ Revisited the major draw, but it’s hard to recommend a restoration job this botched.
Michael has awarded Streets of Fire three Torches of Truth
