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Saturday, April 24, 2010

Streets Of Fire Is Worth Seeing

By Max Monroe

Walter Hill directed Streets of Fire as an attempt at making what he believed would've been the absolute best movie ever when he was a teen. He wrote the script by simply writing a checklist of things he loved as a kid, and making sure that the script included everything on the list. We'd put it on any top movie downloads list of great eighties flicks.

The movie follows Tom Cody, a soldier who's been discharged and returns to his old hometown when Ellen Aim, his old sweetheart, and a pop music sensation, is kidnapped by Raven, the leader of the local biker gang. The film works on the level of fantasy, mixing fifties and eighties aesthetics into a new kind of setting. The environment the characters inhabit is surreal and dreamlike, and the cinematography is beautiful, with rainy streets and neon signs dominating the screen.

Something that really helps to define the movie is the music. Again, it blends the style of the fifties with the eighties, so you have those great old Doo Wop dance rock songs treated with a layer of synth rock and roll and dramatic female vocals. Ellen Aim's band, The Attackers, features prominently in the film. One of these songs, I Can Dream About You, actually climbed up pretty high on the charts.

The story is fairly stock, but because of the setting and music, it's really elevated to something more than just cliche. Rather, it's archetypal, the film is elevated to the level of fairy tale or legend by the stock characters and situations. The girl is kidnapped, the hero saves her, the end, sure, but it really does play out as a Rock and Roll fairy tale or fable.

Walter Hill has remained one of the great directors of the last few decades, but rarely gets the respect he really deserves as such. He continues to knock it out of the park with more recent films like Undisputed, and earns acclaim with each new film, but is rarely mentioned alongside Scorsese or Brian dePalma, which is truly a shame, as he's certainly one of the most entertaining directors alive.

The pop and rock soundtrack is contrasted by Ry Cooder's guitar score, which adds an extra layer of earthiness to the character of Tom Cody. The atmosphere and soundtrack are largely glitzy and fast paced, so the more laid back, gritty sound of Cooder's slide guitar adds a certain contrast that really helps both sides of the soundtrack compliment each other.

If you want a great double feature, watch Streets of Fire alongside The Warriors. The Warriors is, similarly, a sort of Rock and Roll, street fable, but takes the concept in a rougher, tougher, more gritty direction, while Streets of Fire is a little more glossy, a little more pretty and colorful in comparison to The Warriors and its title street gang heroes.

There was to be a pair of sequels to the film, but, sadly, they never panned out, as Streets of Fire didn't exactly set the box office on fire. Today, the film has become a major cult classic, but it wasn't easy to market twenty odd years ago. Check it out and see why it's one of the all time coolest action flicks.

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