Rumble Fish Details

Breathtakingly iconic

This is a full on masterpiece, made back-to-back with Coppola's adaptation of 'The Outsiders' also based on an SE Hinton teen novel with many of the cast doubling up. Unlike that film's rose-tinted view of youth 'Rumblefish' shows the dark side of teen city gangs, and is stunningly photographed in black and white with forced-perspective wide-angle-lens Expressionistic shots perfectly capturing an urban nightmare. There are plenty of moments of pure dream-like beauty, such as Rusty's out of body experience and his almost balletic fight that culminates with the return of his brother. The cast is amazing, almost everyone a star (and what a screwed-up family core of Matt Dillon, Mickey Rourke and Dennis Hopper as Dad), and the dub-tinged music score by Stewart Copeland is awesome. Every single moment of this film is cool, although it was criticised on release for being overblown (it is quite deliberately and is all the better for it) and has since become almost a 'lost' classic. The Motorcycle Boy really does reign!

I read the book when I was about 11 and the film is very true to it while giving it it's own very stylised feel. Not everything about it works but the cast is very good and carries the fairly audacious approach off.