{"id":12610,"date":"2018-04-24T20:00:26","date_gmt":"2018-04-25T01:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=12610"},"modified":"2018-04-21T16:36:46","modified_gmt":"2018-04-21T21:36:46","slug":"rumble-fish-1983-francis-ford-coppola","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/12610","title":{"rendered":"Rumble Fish (1983, Francis Ford Coppola)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Visually and performatively stylized melodrama, slangy and retro and dreamily lit, like a much better Grease<\/a><\/em>, or a nonmusical West Side Story<\/a><\/em>. Rusty James (Matt Dillon in his third S.E. Hinton movie in a row) mopes around with his tough friend Smokey (Nicolas Cage, his second year in the movies) and his nerdy David Cronenberg-looking friend Steve (Vincent Spano of City of Hope<\/em>) and Nice Guy Eddie, speaking wistfully about Rusty’s long-missing older brother, local-legend gangster The Motorcycle Boy. Rusty James has a hot girlfriend Patty (Diane Lane) who’s into him, but he cheats and disappears and flakes around. Rusty James is trying to keep alive the gang wars he barely remembers from his brother’s day, and just as he’s losing a fight, The Motorcycle Boy dramatically reappears. This is the earliest I’ve seen Mickey Rourke, four years before Angel Heart<\/a><\/em>, doing his gentle\/tough handsome-zen thing – everyone in town agrees he’s crazy, but we don’t see him acting crazy, except maybe when he liberates every animal in the pet store.<\/p>\n

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It’s clear from the tone of the thing that somebody is doomed – probably Rourke (and yup, sure enough). The cops aren’t happy to see him back, but a heroin-addict substitute teacher starts hanging around, and old rivalries start simmering. It’s kind of a hangout movie where not much happens, but it feels tense most of the time. Dillon’s character is kind of an idiot, and his idol brother’s return blows up his worldview that things were better in the tough old days. In the end Rourke has died, Cage has stolen the girl and said he’d take over the gang if there even was a gang, Rusty James rides his brother’s motorcycle to the ocean, and it sounds like Wall of Voodoo over the credits but I guess it was that guy from The Police.<\/p>\n

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I keep meaning to watch the four hours of extras on the Criterion disc, but haven’t found the time. The Outsiders<\/em> was also a Coppola-shot S.E. Hinton-written gang movie made the same year, and I should have double-featured these. The cast in this film is impressive – the brothers’ shitty alcoholic dad is Dennis Hopper, Laurence Fishburne is a gang go-between, Tom Waits a bartender. William Smith, who starred in the real David Cronenberg’s Fast Company<\/em>, is the mustache cop who uses inappropriate force to kill Rourke after the pet store incident.<\/p>\n

Rumble brothers with grudge cop:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Visually and performatively stylized melodrama, slangy and retro and dreamily lit, like a much better Grease, or a nonmusical West Side Story. Rusty James (Matt Dillon in his third S.E. Hinton movie in a row) mopes around with his tough friend Smokey (Nicolas Cage, his second year in the movies) and his nerdy David Cronenberg-looking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[357,1085,2423,1750,394,1243,1512,2424,1296,275,614,2422,915],"class_list":["post-12610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1980s","tag-dennis-hopper","tag-diane-lane","tag-fishes","tag-francis-ford-coppola","tag-gangsters","tag-lawrence-fishburne","tag-matt-dillon","tag-mickey-rourke","tag-motorcycles","tag-nicolas-cage","tag-se-hinton","tag-tom-waits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12610"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12627,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12610\/revisions\/12627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}