Rumble Fish – A Movie Review

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We return to those opulent, violent and often embarrassing 1980′s in today’s LLE movie review segment by examining the classic 1983 Francis Ford Coppola film, Rumble Fish. Set in a past its prime industrial New York town and imagined by S.E. Hinton of Outsiders fame, this harsh and gritty Black & White film refamiliarizes reminds us how difficult the journey of maturing can be, especially when influential older siblings and cruel social conditions may surround us.

Through this poignant, philosophical tale we get to follow our disconnected and confused anti-hero Rusty James (Matt Dillon) through his daily grinds of “Never being good enough,” and his deep seated frustrations over his belief he was born too late in history be truly cool or respected. Forced out of school, his circle of friends and the warm arms of Diane Lane, Rusty spends most of the show desperately trying to recreate the no-so-good family name his older brother, the Motorcycle Boy (Rourke), once created.

Twisting, turning, fighting and bleeding to the imaginative sound tracked tunes of former Police man, Stewart Copeland, this remarkable motion picture revolves around Rourke’s fascination with Siamese fighting fish held captive at a local pet store, which we find later is actually a raw metaphor for the territoriality, exclusion and hostility that bubbles below our supposedly advanced and civilized society.

If you check this film out, be sure to look for the young Nick Cage Coppola, the late Christopher Penn, the dreamy Diane Lane, veteran drunk Dennis Hopper, the flashy Laurence Fishburne, the scratchy Tom Waits as Benny, and even a rare cameo appearance by S.E. Hinton herself, who appears as a Boardwalk prostitute in the show. If great acting isn’t your particular shot of bourbon, then simply see this film for the extraordinary cinematography and the imperative message it provides about rigid institutions, abusive authority figures and learning there is more to life than just living through it.

Duration : 0:4:12

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