trb@drutx.UUCP (BuckleyTR) (07/14/84)
from The Review of The News, July 11, 1984:
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ASPHALT BUNGLE
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Michael Pare' and Diana Lane take the heat in "Streets Of Fire," the
latest celluloid combustion from director Walter Hill, who has tried
unsuccessfully to regenerate the youthful intensity he ignited in 1979
with "The Warriors." Described by its producers as "A Rock & Roll
Fable," this Universal-RKO Picture is composed of an unrelenting rock
score choreographed with acts of violence. There is little here to
resemble plot, with Hill content merely to keep the movement on the
screen pulsating to the constant beat of the soundtrack. The effect
is about what you might expect from watching "The Longest Day" while
listening to Michael Jackson on your Walkman.
Set in "another time, another place," "Streets Of Fire" undulates
through a derelict atmosphere bathed in surrealism that suggests
Detroit viewed through the eyes of Timothy Leary. Here the police
drive Studebakers, and the gangs ride motorcycles, and the fashions
range from Fifties plaid to Eighties punk...to Depression Era "Star
Wars." No sooner do we decide that the cast is crusing through a
rough section of New York than they turn the corner and we think they
must be in Lawerence, Kansas, on the day after.
In the midst of this urban confusion, Hill has placed characters as
bizarrely diverse as the surroundings. Appropriate to the quality of
the script, the performances exhibit no more expression than we have
come to expect from automatic tellers.
Diane Lane portrays an emerging rock singer whose concert so excites a
local motorcycle gang that its members abduct her right off the stage.
We would certainly not criticize the taste of a group of bikers; but,
as a rock star, the main thing Diane has going for her is that she is
prettier than Boy George.
Enter Michael Pare' as Diane's quenched flame, an ex-soldier and all-
around cool dude who is so overcome by the news of his former love's
kidnapping that he agrees to go to her rescue...for a price. Paired
with dreary Lane, Pare' gets little chance here to live up to the
potential he was said to have shown in last year's ill-fated "Eddie
And The Cruisers." Either he is slipping or he is so good that Hill
didn't bother to wake him for the takes.
Accompanied by Rick Moranis, as Diane Lane's mouthy manager and
current beau, and Amy Madigan, as another ex-soldier who enlists in
Pare's cause for beer money, our hero stalks the city armed only with
a repeating rifle and a determination to be the screen's next
monosyllabic Clint Eastwood. Sparks fly when Pare' confronts the
leader of the pack of motorcycle hellions, portrayed by Willem Dafoe.
Attired in patent-leather overalls and wearing the pallor of Dracula
on a hunger strike, Dafoe only spits epithets at Pare' until the
climactic showdown when they go one-on-one in a duel of sledgehammers.
Save for a raunchy nightclub strip-tease, "Streets Of Fire" is light
on sex, preferring to push violent action to the brink of its PG
rating.
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The Review of The News, 395 Concord Ave, Belmont, Mass. 02178
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Tom Buckley
ihnp4!drutx!trb