Moving Pictures

BOMBASTIC AND BIZARRE ‘STREETS OF FIRE’ COMES TO NETFLIX

BY JOE NOLAN, FILM CRITIC

Streets of Fire (1984) should’ve been a huge hit: co-writer/director Walter Hill was just coming off the successes of The Warriors (1979) and 48 Hours (1982). Diane Lane was a 19-year-old beauty who had just appeared in backto-back films — The Outsiders (1983) and Rumble Fish (1983) — by legendary director Francis Ford Coppola. The movie’s soundtrack included contributions from some of the biggest talents in music in the 1980s. But, instead of delivering a ready-made hit, Hill’s film is a poetic, surreal portrait of youthful rebellion and romance that’s become a cult classic in the 37 years since its release precisely because it’s so singularly bizarre and fully committed to its eccentricities. Streets of Fire opens with what seems like every person in the fictional city of Richmond rushing to see rock queen Ellen Aim (Diane Lane) in concert. A gang called The Bombers raids the concert and kidnaps Aim. Tom Cody (Michael Pare), a former soldier, returns to Richmond to save Aim after receiving a telegram message from his sister. Cody agrees to rescue Aim after her manager, Billy Fish (Rick Moranis) promises Cody ten thousand dollars. Cody teams up with a misfit crackerjack mechanic/driver named McCoy (Amy Madigan). Cody rescues Aim from The Bombers and their maniacal leader, Raven (Willem Dafoe). But Raven vows revenge on both Cody and Aim who are protecting a secret of their own. The real star of Streets of Fire is the setting and the production design that brings it to life. Director Walter Hill has described his filmmaking style as “exaggerated realism,”

and you’d be hard-pressed to find a more exaggerated form of realism than the one Hill delivers here. Hill and his crew built a whole universe of heroes, villains, street gangs and rock bands in what feels like only a few blocks in the shadows of Chicago’s elevated trains. The film’s opening credits tell viewers that the movie takes place in “Another time. Another place.” The brick and blacktop and train tracks certainly feel like the industrial Midwest, but the more intriguing aspect of the film’s setting isn’t where it takes place, but when. All the cars in the film are from the 1950s, but all the music in this almost-a-musical movie sounds exactly like it was keyboarded and compressed in 1984. The soundtrack features contributions from contemporaneous chart-charging artists like Stevie Nicks, Maria McKee, Tom Petty, The Fixx and Dan Hartman whose “I Can Dream About You” climbed to No. 6 on Billboard’s Top 10 chart in the summer of 1984. The Bombers gang dresses in black leather and denim, prowling the streets of Richmond on vintage motorcycles — it’s like a B-roll from The Wild One (1953). Tom Cody carries a lever-action Winchester straight out of a John Wayne western, and Ellen Aim’s stage fashions draw equally from Marilyn Monroe and Madonna.

American politics went conservative during the Reagan years and fashion was suddenly washed in pink and black — even big hair and saddle shoes both made a comeback. Hill – who co-wrote the script with Larry Gross — may have discerned how the 1980s echoed the 1950s, but Streets of Fire is also populated by Hill’s personal memories of his own teenage years during the Eisenhower era. The film’s original press kit quoted Hill saying he wanted Streets of Fire to feature all the elements he thought were, "great then and which I still have great affection for: custom cars, kissing in the rain, neon, trains in the night, high-speed pursuit, rumbles, rock stars, motorcycles, jokes in tough situations, leather jackets and questions of honor." Hill delivers all that and more in this teenybopper opera for the ages.

Streets of Fire was added to Netflix on June 1

Joe Nolan is a critic, columnist and performing singer/songwriter based in East Nashville. Find out more about his projects at www.joenolan.com.