Motorcycle Boys Reigns

Rumble Fish is a film released by Universal Pictures in 1983, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the S.E. Hinton novel of the same name. Ms Hinton was also the author of the book "The Outsiders " another story of troubled adolescents living in the poor sections of Tulsa Oklahoma. Music for the movie was composed and performed by Stewart Copeland better known of the band The Police.
The players were....

• Rusty James is played by Matt Dillon, at the height of the idol phase of his career.
• Midget is played by Lawrence Fishburne, who worked with Coppola in the movie Apocalypse Now. Midget serves as Rusty's guardian angel, a messenger of truth.
• Smokey's part is played by Nicolas Cage, member of the Wild Deuces. This was his first movie and no doubt a boost from his powerful director relative. His work in the movie is a bit stiff but it fits the part.
• The late Christopher Penn, Sean's fat less talented brother plays one of the gang's thumpers.
• Rusty's clean cut bespectacled friend Steve is played by Vincent Spano. An early film for Spano who like Cage seems out of place, stiff and uncomfortable, but the part is constructed that way so it works.
• Rusty's girlfriend Patty is played Diane Lane, both Lane and Dillon were in the movie The Outsiders, filmed by the same group only weeks earlier.
• Dennis Hopper played the drunken father of Motorcycle Boy and Rusty James. A lawyer on welfare as the boys call him. This father is like Motorcycle Boy clearly having an appreciation for classical education, and clearly the victim of his own mind's productivity.
• Bill James, The Motorcycle Boy, Rusty's brother is played by Mickey Rourke. This is during Rourke's star period, other work during that time included Body Heat, Diner and The Pope of Greenwich Village.
• The billiards parlor owner Benny is played by Tom Waits. Benny repeatedly mutters that he has only 35 summers left. Waits is better known, at least to me, as the gravely voice blues singer of Smokey Joe's Cafe.

The scenery is in black and white, the fish neon red and blue. The gang's name is the Wild Deuces and while Motorcycle Boy is out of town his not so intelligent brother is standing in as the leader. The first rumble in the movie has the choreographed feel of the fight in West Side Story, as it turns out the scene was staged by a ballet director. This fight is simplified to a man on man struggle between Rusty and the pill popping leader of a rival gang, Biff Wilcox. Rusty wins the fight but then Motorcycle Boy shows up, distracts Rusty and the beaten rival slashes Rusty with a knife. Motorcycle Boy finishes pill popper off with a thrust of the cycle. At one point Rusty is asked "Why are you fucked up all the time, one way or another?" The Motorcycle Boy is having second thoughts about being the leader of a gang; he tells Rusty "you know, if you are going to lead people you have to have somewhere to go". Colorblind, he has memories seeing color. The trip to California was to see the mother that had left them 15 years earlier. A pool player in described Motorcycle Boy as a prince, able to do anything he desires physically or mentally. Rusty is mugged, hit in the head with a tire iron and has a death experience, levitating and seeing those that love him. Reconnecting with his body he sees Motorcycle Boy beat up and run off the muggers. Rusty idolizes his brother and the glory of gang life. He wants revitalize the gang's strength. In reality Rusty is a walking punching bag, he gets cut, mugged and tricked out of his girlfriend, there is no chance that Rusty become what he wants most, to become his brother.
In a late bar scene the father tells Rusty that every now and then a person comes along that has a different perception of the world. An acute perception doesn't make you crazy. However an acute perception can drive you crazy. He's really miscast in a play, born in the wrong era, on the wrong side of the river. With the ability to anything and finding nothing.
Rusty keeps saying that he wants to be like his older brother, to which the father expresses his pity by calling him poor child.
Bill ends up back at the pet store that has the Siamese Fighting Fish, that he calls Rumble Fish. He breaks in and frees the birds, the puppies, and tries to dump the fish into the river. He asks Rusty to take a stolen motorcycle and drive it clear to the ocean, following the river. The local beat cop shoots and kills Motorcycle Boy, Rusty collects the fish and sets them free into the river.
The movie ends with Rusty driving the motorcycle up to the beach, presumably California.

Score 34 of 50, better than average because of Coppola and Rourke.

• Character development 6 out of 10. Difficult to follow but the slow witted Rusty James and his street royalty brother play out a dark dance leading to the elder's suicide and the little brother's escape, both leaving the father stagnant and wasting.
• Acting 5 out of 10. Work that I enjoyed but held back by some of the younger actor's inexperience.
• Photography, cinematography 9 of 10. Black and white, extensive use of shadowing in a retro style.
• Writing, script 7 out of 10. The work by Hinton is good. The mythology angle from the book should have been left in the movie.
• Concept 7 out of 10. The premise was good, but the movie came close to being a well directed star vehicle for the then up and comers.