In Rumble Fish is a deeply personal tale of the enduring estrangement and ultimate reconciliation between two rebellious brothers.
Grade: B-
Setting the film in a dreamlike, sort of timeless Tulsa, director Francis Ford Coppola goes for grand, mythic dimensions applied to the intimate emotions of a bunch of confused youngsters, looking for their place in society.
The film centers on the relationship between a guy called the Motorcycle Boy (Rourke), a revered former gang leader wishing to live a more peaceful life, and his younger brother, Rusty James (Dillon), a teenaged hoodlum who aspires to become a fearless leader as his brother was
Coppola wrote the screenplay for the film with Hinton on his days off from shooting The Outsiders. He made the films back-to-back, retaining much of the same cast and crew, particularly Matt Dillon and Diane Lane.
Rumble Fish is dedicated to Coppola’s brother, August.
The film is notable for its avant-garde European style with a noir feel to it, shot on stark high-contrast black-and-white film.
There may be “too much style” for telling a rather simple story, with the director making allusions to French New Wave as well as German Expressionism.
Rumble Fish features an experimental score by Stewart Copeland, a drummer of the musical group “The Police,” who used Musync, a new device at the time.
Self-described “art film for teenagers,” the movie was a commercial failure, a result of its overwhelming (and ultimately distracting) stylistic touches, which made most characters less appealing and less relatable than they must have been in the book.
The film’s black-and-white visuals look forward to Coppola’s own feature, Tetro, which was always a flop.
Stewart Copeland‘s powerful, percussive score underscores the movie’s romantic fatalism, dealing with the universal issues of love and dread.
Cast
Matt Dillon as Rusty James
Mickey Rourke as The Motorcycle Boy
Diane Lane as Patty
Dennis Hopper as Father
Diana Scarwid as Cassandra
Vincent Spano as Steve
Nicolas Cage as “Smokey”
Chris Penn as B.J. Jackson
Larry Fishburne as “Midget”
William Smith as Officer Patterson
Tracey Walter as Alley Mugger
Glenn Withrow as Biff Wilcox
Tom Waits as Benny, The Barkeeper
Michael Higgins as Principal Harrigan
The director’s daughter, Sofia Coppola, then age 11, was cast as Donna, Patty’s Sister, and author S. E. Hinton has a cameo as a prostitute,