{"id":2642,"date":"2024-08-21T21:35:30","date_gmt":"2024-08-21T21:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=2642"},"modified":"2024-10-13T18:41:37","modified_gmt":"2024-10-13T22:41:37","slug":"streets-of-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/08\/21\/streets-of-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"Streets of Fire"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Streets of Fire<\/strong> (1984)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Action-Adventure-Sci-Fi\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 93 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (language, violence, brief sexuality)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Walter Hill\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Walter Hill and Larry Gross\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Ry Cooder\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Andrew Laszlo\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: June 1, 1984 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Starring: Michael Pare, Diane Lane, Rick Moranis, Amy Madigan, Willem Dafoe, Deborah Van Valkenburgh, Richard Lawson, Rick Rossovich, Bill Paxton, Lee Ving, Stoney Jackson, Grand L. Bush, Robert Townsend, Mykelti Williamson, Elizabeth Daily, Lynne Thigpen, Marine Jahan, Ed Begley Jr., John Dennis Johnston, Peter Jason, Paul Mones.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $8.1M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>:\u00a0*** \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0The key to understanding Walter Hill\u2019s Streets of Fire<\/strong> is realizing his “rock and roll fable” takes place in some alternate reality where the 50s never quite went away. People still drive around in Studebakers and wear clothing that reflects the era. The music has elements of doo-wop, rock and roll, rockabilly and 80s New Wave. The people of the fictional town of Richmond live underneath the elevated tracks of the train. It\u2019s a 50s world with an 80s sensibility.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Ellen Aim (Lane, The Outsiders), a hometown girl who made it big as a rock star, returns home to do a benefit concert. After a great opening number \u201cNowhere Fast\u201d, things get crazy. Raven (Dafoe, Wild at Heart), the leader of a leather-clad motorcycle gang, jumps up on stage and kidnaps Ellen much to the annoyance of her manager\/boyfriend Billy Fish (Moranis, Parenthood), a wimp who dresses like the class creep of 1958.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The only one who can do anything about it is Ellen’s ex-boyfriend Tom Cody (Pare, Eddie and the Cruisers), an ex-soldier who isn\u2019t very popular with the local cops. His sister Reva (Van Valkenburgh, The Warriors) calls him home to rescue Ellen from The Bombers holed up in the worst part of town- aka \u201cThe Battery\u201d. He agrees to do the job for $10,000. He\u2019s joined by McCoy (Madigan, Field Of Dreams), a tough-as-nails mechanic who can drive anything on wheels.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Going in and grabbing Ellen is the easy part of the mission. She\u2019s being held at a club called Torchy\u2019s (a Hill trademark). Cody and McCoy manage to retrieve her right out from under Raven\u2019s nose. The hard part is getting back home. In that respect, Streets of Fire<\/strong> resembles another Hill classic, The Warriors. Along the way, they encounter a doo-wop band The Sorels looking for their big break. Their bus comes in mighty handy. Naturally, it\u2019ll all come down to a big fight between Cody and Raven.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Streets of Fire<\/strong> is never boring, not even when there\u2019s no action. It\u2019s the whole look of the movie that keeps it interesting throughout. The combination of different eras is clever. Raven is an evil version of a 50s motorcycle gang leader. As played by the always reliable Dafoe, he positively oozes danger and menace. He\u2019s aided by Lee Ving (Black Moon Rising) as his second-in-command. He makes one scary villain too. Pare does fine work as the misunderstood hero. His tough guy persona is a fa\u00e7ade covering how he really feels about Ellen. He claims to be saving her just for the money, but we know it\u2019s because he still cares. Streets of Fire<\/strong> is one of the three movies that were supposed to catapult Pare to stardom, the others being Eddie and the Cruisers and The Philadelphia Experiment, but it never happened for him. It\u2019s too bad because he\u2019s actually a pretty good actor.<\/p>\n

\u00a0One of the most compelling characters of this movie is McCoy. Madigan takes the character and runs with it. She\u2019s a total bad ass. Lane is very good as Ellen, a rocker who\u2019s also hiding her true feelings about Cody. He may have ditched her without a word back in the day, but she never stopped loving him. Moranis is dead-on perfect as the weaselly manager who keeps trying to save face with Ellen against a tougher romantic adversary.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Streets of Fire <\/strong>failed at the box office upon its release. It doesn\u2019t help that it opened against Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. It\u2019s clear what movie audiences will opt to see if given the choice. I am one of the few that chose to see Streets of Fire<\/strong> instead of Star Trek III that weekend. It looked like something I\u2019d enjoy and I did. It tells a cool story. Ry Cooder, a frequent Hill collaborator, provides a dead-on perfect score as usual. Ellen\u2019s songs (actually sung by Fire Inc.) are great especially \u201cNowhere Fast\u201d and \u201cTonight Is What It Means to Be Young\u201d, both written by frequent Meat Loaf collaborator Jim Steinman. Another track \u201cI Can Dream About You\u201d became a huge hit for the late Dan Hartman. The concert scenes, some of the best I\u2019ve ever seen, brim with pure energy.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Hill, one of my favorite directors, does an amazing job with Streets of Fire<\/strong>. He gives us a cool supporting cast that includes Elizabeth Daily (Bad Dreams) as a groupie, Bill Paxton (Weird Science) as Cody\u2019s bartender friend and John Dennis Johnston (The Beast Within) as an illegal arms dealer.<\/p>\n

\u00a0One of the most underrated movies of the 80s, Streets of Fire <\/strong>seemed to play on an endless loop on cable in the latter half of the 80s yet nobody ever talked about it. I got funny looks from high school classmates when I said how much I enjoyed it. I guess, like me, it was ahead of its time. Nobody but a select few got what Hill was going for. I did, of course, and enjoyed every minute of it.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Streets of Fire (1984)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Action-Adventure-Sci-Fi\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 93 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (language, violence, brief sexuality)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Walter Hill\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Walter Hill and Larry Gross\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Ry Cooder\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Andrew Laszlo\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: June 1, 1984 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Starring: Michael Pare, Diane Lane, Rick Moranis, Amy Madigan, Willem Dafoe, Deborah Van Valkenburgh, Richard Lawson, Rick Rossovich, Bill Paxton, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3531,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action-adventure","category-cool-cult-flicks"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Streets-of-Fire-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2642"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3533,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2642\/revisions\/3533"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}