Streets of Fire
Streets of Fire is a 1984 American action crime neo-noir film directed by Walter Hill, from a screenplay by Hill and Larry Gross. Described on the poster and in the opening credits as "A Rock & Roll Fable", the film combines elements of the automobile culture and music from the 1950s with the fashion style and sociology of the 1980s.[2] Starring Michael Paré, Diane Lane, Rick Moranis, Amy Madigan, Willem Dafoe, Deborah Van Valkenburgh, E.G. Daily, and Bill Paxton, the film follows ex-soldiers Tom Cody (Paré) and McCoy (Madigan) as they embark on a mission to rescue Cody's ex-girlfriend Ellen Aim (Lane), who was kidnapped by Raven Shaddock (Dafoe), the leader of an outlaw motorcycle gang called The Bombers.
For other uses, see Streets of Fire (disambiguation).Streets of Fire
- Walter Hill
- Larry Gross
- James Coblentz
- Freeman A. Davies
- Michael Ripps
- Michael Tronick
- RKO Pictures
- Hill-Gordon-Silver Productions
- June 1, 1984 (United States)
93 minutes
United States
English
$14.5 million
$8.1 million[1]
Streets of Fire was theatrically released in the United States on June 1, 1984, to mixed reviews from critics and was a box office failure, grossing $8 million against its $14.5 million budget.
Plot[edit]
In Richmond, a city district in a near future dystopian time period that resembles the 1950s (labelled "another time, another place"), Ellen Aim, lead singer of the rock band Ellen Aim and the Attackers, has returned home for a concert. The Bombers, a biker gang from another part of town called the Battery, led by Raven Shaddock, crash the concert and kidnap Ellen.
Witnessing this is Reva Cody, who telegrams her brother Tom, an ex-soldier and Ellen's ex-boyfriend, asking him to come home. Upon his return, Tom defeats a small gang of greasers and takes their car. Reva tries to convince Tom to rescue Ellen, but he refuses. Tom then goes to a local tavern, the Blackhawk, where he meets a tomboyish mechanic and ex-soldier named McCoy and lets her stay with him and Reva. That night, Tom has a change of heart and agrees to talk to Ellen's manager and current boyfriend, Billy Fish, about rescuing her.
While Reva and McCoy go to the diner where Reva works, Tom acquires a cache of weapons, including a pump action shotgun, a revolver, and a lever action rifle. Tom meets Billy at the diner, and Billy agrees to pay him $10,000, but Tom also requires that Billy accompany him into the Battery to get Ellen, since he used to live there. McCoy also talks Tom into cutting her in for 10% in exchange for her help.
In the Battery, they go to Torchie's, a club where Billy used to book bands and where Raven has Ellen tied up in an upstairs bedroom. McCoy enters and is led upstairs by one of the Bombers, whom she knocks out before holding Raven and some of his gang members at gunpoint. Meanwhile, Tom creates a diversion outside by shooting the gas tanks on the gang's motorcycles, and then rescues Ellen. Tom sends Ellen off with McCoy and Billy in the convertible, telling them to meet him at the Grant Street underpass and blows up the gas pumps outside a bar. Raven confronts Tom and warns him that he will be coming for Ellen and for him, too. Tom escapes on the one intact motorcycle and meets up with the others.
The group is joined by "Baby Doll", a fan of Ellen's, who warns them that the police are looking for the people who were behind the attack at Torchie’s. To escape, the group hijacks the tour bus of a doo-wop group called the Sorels. The bus is eventually stopped by a police blockade. Billy tries to get rid of the corrupt police officers by bribing them, but Tom and McCoy have to resort to holding the police at gunpoint and shooting up their vehicles. The group, along with the Sorels, ditch the bus and take a train back to Richmond.
Raven meets with Ed Price, the head of the police department, and promises him no more trouble if he arranges for Tom to meet with him alone. Price plans on arresting Raven, so he tells Tom to get out of town, so as to avoid any more violence. Tom goes to the hotel where Ellen and Billy are staying to collect his reward, but he takes only McCoy's cut and throws the rest back at Billy. As Tom storms out, Ellen follows and the two embrace in the rain. After having sex, Tom and Ellen discuss the possibility of eloping.
Price, with reinforcements, is just about to arrest Raven, but is ambushed by an overwhelming number of Bombers. Meanwhile, Ellen is on a train with Tom and McCoy, believing that Tom is leaving with her, but Tom knocks out Ellen and returns to town to confront Raven. Tom and Raven duel using sledgehammers and their fists, with Tom ultimately being victorious. The defeated gang carries their leader away. Later, at a concert, the Sorels open for Ellen and her band. Tom bids farewell to Ellen, promising that he’ll always be there for her if she needs him. Ellen performs on stage, while Tom rides off with McCoy.
Production[edit]
Development[edit]
The concept for Streets of Fire came together during the making of 48 Hrs., and reunited director Walter Hill with screenwriter Larry Gross, and producers Lawrence Gordon and Joel Silver, all of whom worked together on that production.[3] Gross later recalled:
Streets of Fire
Reception[edit]
Box office[edit]
Streets of Fire fared poorly at the box office, opening in 1,150 theaters on June 1, 1984, and grossing $2.4 million during its first weekend.[24] After 10 days, it made $4.5 million, while fellow opener Star Trek III: The Search for Spock grossed $34.8 million in the same time.[11]
Gross says Hill was making Brewster's Millions at the time. "Joel got off the phone with Universal and said, 'We're dead.' We sat down, I remember, in a little park. In downtown LA. And we started giggling, in that way people do when things are terrible...there's the song in the movie called 'Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young'. And I remember, in the park, Joel saying, 'Today Is What It Means to be Dead'."[4]
The film went on to make a total of $8 million in North America, compared to a production budget of $14.5 million.[24]
"I was shattered when the film didn't perform", said Gross. "That broke my heart...I hoped, by the time the movie finished, that it would be whipped into a shape and design that would have a real impact. And then it didn't, and that was sad."[4]
Critical response[edit]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 70% of 30 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.20/10. The website's consensus reads: "Streets of Fire may sometimes buckle under the strain of its ambitious fusion of disparate genres, but Walter Hill's bravura style gives this motorcycle musical fuel to burn."[25] On Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, the film holds a score of 59 out of 100 based on 14 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[26]
Janet Maslin of The New York Times criticized the film's screenplay as being misogynistic and "problematically crude."[27]
Gary Arnold wrote in The Washington Post that as "romantic leads, Paré and Lane are pretty much a washout", and that "most of the action climaxes are treated as such throwaways that you begin to wonder if they bored the director."[28]
Jay Scott wrote in The Globe and Mail that "when Streets of Fire is speeding by like Mercury on methedrine, the rush left in its wake cancels out questions of content. But the minute the momentum slows, it's another story—a story about a movie with no story at all."[29]
In an essay for Film Comment, David Chute wrote "It's probably impossible not to enjoy the movie. No director holds a candle to Hill for sheer visceral expertise. But the moods didn't linger. It's such a hard-shelled picture that it barely has moods."[11]
Roger Ebert wrote that "the language is strange, too: It's tough, but not with 1984 toughness. It sounds like the way really mean guys would have talked in the late 1950s, only with a few words different--as if this world evolved a slightly different language."[30]
Legacy[edit]
Screenwriter Larry Gross said the film has been influential: