Rumble Fish

Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Screenplay: S.E. Hinton & Francis Ford Coppola (based on the novel by S.E. Hinton)
Stars: Matt Dillon (Rusty James), Mickey Rourke (The Motorcycle Boy), Diane Lane (Patty), Dennis Hopper (Father), Diana Scarwid (Cassandra), Vincent Spano (Steve), Nicolas Cage (Smokey), Chris Penn (B.J. Jackson), Laurence Fishburne (Midget), William Smith (Patterson the Cop), Michael Higgins (Mr. Harrigan), Glenn Withrow (Biff Wilcox), Tom Waits (Benny)
MPAA Rating: R
Year of Release: 1983
Country: U.S.
Rumble Fish
Rumble Fish

In the span of a little over a year, Francis Ford Coppola, still reeling from the colossal failure of his stylized musical One From the Heart (1982) and the subsequent demise of Zoetrope Studios and his hopes of becoming a full-fledged Hollywood mogul, directed two relatively low-budget adaptations of young-adult novels by S.E. Hinton that, despite being both set in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and having overlapping cast and crew, couldn’t have been any different. The first (and much more popular) was The Outsiders, which chronicled the tensions between “greaser” and “soc” gangs in the late 1960s via the highly stylized ’Scope, Technicolor look of ’50s dramas like Rebel Without a Cause (1954). The second (and much less popular) was Rumble Fish, which was shot in a distinctly black-and-white European art-film style replete with extreme angles, intense visual juxtapositions, and an expressionistic suspension of reality in favor of emotional and symbolic directness. If The Outsiders, which is often pejoratively labeled the more commercial of the two projects, is a film that Nicholas Ray might have made, then Rumble Fish fits right in the wheelhouse of Jean Cocteau or F.W Murnau.

Matt Dillon, who also played a delinquent character in The Outsiders, stars as Rusty James, a 17-year-old hood who wiles away most of his time at the local pool hall and with his girlfriend Patty (Diane Lane, also a veteran of The Outsiders). Rusty James is tough, but not particularly bright, and he fancies himself the leader of a teen gang that includes Smokey (Nicolas Cage), B.J. (Chris Penn), and Steve (Vincent Spano), the latter of whom is a reluctant member who Rusty James keeps around because they were childhood friends. However, Rusty James, despite being a good fighter and a brash presence, is no leader, and he lives largely in the shadow of his older brother, who is known only as The Motorcycle Boy (Mickey Rourke). The Motorcycle Boy disappeared some time ago with no expectation that he would ever return, and Rusty James has been trying (and largely failing) to live up to his legend.

And then one day The Motorcycle Boy reappears, having traveled to California and back, which sets Rusty James into a kind of slow-spiral identity crisis in which he struggles to make sense of his place in the world and in relation to The Motorcycle Boy, who is, in his eyes and in the eyes of many others, a mythical figure. The Motorcycle Boy, however, wants no part of the gang violence he once lorded over, and he quietly struggles to shed the expectations with which others saddle him. Soft-spoken and deeply internal, he confounds the typical notion of the gang leader, a conundrum that Rusty James simply can’t reconcile. They are not helped by their largely absent alcoholic father (Dennis Hopper, a veteran of Coppola’s Apocalypse Now), who offers little guidance in navigating the treacherous path between childhood and adulthood, the former being defined primarily by petty rivalries and rebellion and the latter by simply running away.

Rumble Fish was one of S.E. Hinton’s more challenging novels, so it’s not surprising that it produced the least conventional film adaptation (the other two, in addition to The Outsiders, being Tim Hunter’s Tex from 1982, also starring Dillon, and Christopher Cain’s The Was Then ... And This Is Now from 1985 starring Emilio Estevez and Craig Sheffer). The novel is more philosophical than narrative, and Coppola, who wrote the screenplay with Hinton, follows it closely in that regard, emphasizing its existential themes with extreme visual counterparts involving clocks, out-of-body experiences, and hallucinatory effects that give the impression that everything is unfolding in some kind of bizarre dream.

The cinematography by Stephen H. Burum, who also shot The Outsiders and would go on to be frequent collaborator of Brian De Palma’s (they shot eight films together, starting with 1984’s Body Double and ending with 2000’s Mission to Mars), draws heavily from German expressionism—both its morbid psychological themes and its sacrificing of visual realism for emotional and thematic intensity. Although shot entirely on location around Tulsa, Burum’s cinematography creates a consistently otherworldly vibe via deep focus, canted angles, unexpected perspectives, and patently unrealistic touches like constantly billowing smoke with no source and strong contrasts of light and dark (like the silent-era expressionist directors, Coppola had shadows literally painted on the walls to produce effects that would be all but impossible to achieve with actual light). The only presence of color in the film are the titular “rumble fish,” Siamese fighting fish that The Motorcycle Boy likes to watch in the local pet store and who become symbolic stand-ins for the characters who are constantly poised to inflict violence because they don’t know anything else. Coppola also employed Police drummer Stewart Copeland to compose a wide-ranging, frequently bizarre percussive score that more often than not works in counterpoint to the action on-screen.

The result is a film that is as intriguing and compelling as it is frustrating. As an aesthetic tour de force, Rumble Fish is a daring and brave work, especially given the precarious position in which Coppola, who had won five Oscars and two Palm d’Ors in the 1970s and produced one of the decade’s biggest box office hits, found himself in the 1980s, as the Hollywood he had once sought to revolutionize was retreating into a safer commercial space. Writing about the film during its brief and ill-fated theatrical release, Time critic Richard Corliss described it as “Coppola’s professional suicide note to the movie industry, a warning against employing him to find the golden gross. No doubt, this is his most baroque and self-indulgent film. It may also be his bravest.” Coppola envisioned Rumble Fish as an “art film for teenagers,” but he underestimated the appetite in Reagan-era adolescents for arty flourish and existential dread; while Coppola’s generation had voraciously consumed the difficult films of Bergman and Antonioni and Dreyer, kids in the ’80s were more attuned to Star Wars (1977) and Porky’s (1982). Not surprisingly, then, Rumble Fish failed to connect with its intended audience, nor did it wow critics, most of whom were baffled by what they saw as Coppola’s self-absorbed obsession with arty obscurity.

Time has since revealed the film to be much more than was originally recognized, even if parts of it don’t quite work either narratively or thematically. Both Dillon and Rourke give impressive performances, especially in the way their fraternal characters, who are so very different, struggle and fail to find common ground. Like The Outsiders, Rumble Fish is an adolescent tragedy that ends in senseless violence, and even if it lacks the former film’s more direct and universal appeal to our basic emotions, it will nevertheless click with anyone who can appreciate familiar material told from a different angle.

Rumble Fish Director-Approved Criterion Collection Blu-ray

Aspect Ratio1.85:1
Audio
  • English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround
  • English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 stereo
  • SubtitlesEnglish
    Supplements
  • Audio commentary by director Francis Ford Coppola
  • Video interview with Coppola
  • Video interview with author and coscreenwriter S. E. Hinton
  • Video interview with actors Matt Dillon and Diane Lane
  • Video interview with associate producer Roman Coppola
  • New conversation between Burum and production designer Dean Tavoularis
  • “On Location in Tulsa: The Making of Rumble Fish” 2005 featurette
  • Rumble Fish: The Percussion-Based Score” 2005 featurette
  • Interviews from 1983 with Dillon, Lane, actor Vincent Spano, and producer Doug Claybourne
  • French television interview from 1984 with actor Mickey Rourke
  • “Locations: Looking for Rusty James” 2013 documentary
  • New piece about the film’s existentialist elements
  • “Don’t Box Me In” music video
  • Deleted scenes, with a new introduction by Coppola
  • Trailer
  • Essay by critic Glenn Kenny
  • DistributorThe Criterion Collection
    SRP$39.95
    Release DateApril 25, 2017

    COMMENTS
    It’s been 12 years since Universal released a Special Edition DVD of Rumble Fish in 2005, and Criterion’s new Blu-ray marks a significant improvement. The new, Francis Ford Coppola-approved 16-bit 4K digital transfer was taken from the original 35mm camera negative under the supervision of cinematographer Stephen H. Burum. The resulting image is absolutely gorgeous, bringing the film’s expressionist grandeur back to its original intensity. The image has been scrubbed clean of the signs of age and wear, and the transfer handles fine detail with great aplomb, including all the swirling mist and deep focus compositions. The original two-channel surround soundtrack was transferred from the 35mm original magnetic print master track. We have the option of listening to either the original mix or a Coppola-approved 5.1-channel mix that was created in 2003 from the dialogue, music, and effects stems. Both sound fantastic, with the six-channel mix having the obvious edge in terms of immersive qualities and depth (Stewart Copeland’s percussive score, which also incorporates various natural and urban sounds, is a near constant in the film). Criterion has also gone all out in terms of supplements, retaining all of the extras from the 2005 DVD, which include an audio commentary by Coppola; the retrospective featurette “On Location in Tulsa: The Making of Rumble Fish; “Rumble Fish: The Percussion-Based Score,” a featurette about the composing and recording of Copeland’s eccentric score; several deleted scenes (to which have been added a new introduction by Coppola); the music video for “Don’t Box Me In”; and the original theatrical trailer. New to Criterion’s edition are several video interviews: one with Coppola; one with author and co-screenwriter S. E. Hinton; one with associate producer Roman Coppola; and one with actors Matt Dillon and Diane Lane. Also new is a video conversation between Burum and production designer Dean Tavoularis and an interview with Hofstra University film studies professor Rodney F. Hill (author of The Francis Ford Coppola Encyclopedia) about the film’s existential elements. Criterion has also dug some gems out of the archive, including television interviews from 1983 with Dillon, Lane, actor Vincent Spano, and producer Doug Claybourne and a French television interview from 1984 with actor Mickey Rourke. Finally, the disc includes the recent feature-length documentary Locations: Looking for Rusty James (2013) by Chilean filmmaker Alberto Fuguet that doubles as a portrait of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and a personal look at the impact Rumble Fish had on Fuguet and several other South American filmmakers.

    Copyright © 2017 James Kendrick

    Thoughts? E-mail James Kendrick

    All images copyright © ?????

    Overall Rating: (3)




    James Kendrick

    James Kendrick offers, exclusively on Qnetwork, over 2,500 reviews on a wide range of films. All films have a star rating and you can search in a variety of ways for the type of movie you want. If you're just looking for a good movie, then feel free to browse our library of Movie Reviews.


    © 1998 - 2024 Qnetwork.com - All logos and trademarks in this site are the property of their respective owner.