Streets of Fire!

[Marco Falcone]

Just watched.  

Possibly one of the best films of the mid 80’s.

Had it on VHS for years, after taping it off of Showtime or HBO in the late 80’s.  

Hadn’t seen it for at least 25 years.  Although had been threatening the wife with it for about a year now.

Had a night at home solo, as said wife was out for the night.  (As you get older, and “second-marriager,” those nights are a special treat.  I’m sure she feels the same way.  Second for her as well.  Just the Black Jack being honest.)

SO tonight it was between Streets of Fire and Fast Times at Ridgemont High.   Already watched John Wick 3.  I appreciated the technical aspects of the fights and the world is almost really cool.  But too much of the same bit over and over.  (Sort of like what the Bourne films became.  How many times will Bourne go walking around the same cities in the same clothes and same face, killing the same “local assets?  Sorry I digress...)   I mean, is EVERY semi-hip looking person in NYC part of the Continental-Hit man syndicate?  

Sorry, double digression.


Anyway, STREETS of FIRE!

It’s like a brilliant combination of Miami Vice and Crime Story.

Yeah, Michael Pare’s Tom Cody makes William Shatner in the first Star Trek movie look positively Olivier-esque.   (Holy Haleakela can you imagine if DJ had been cast as Cody?  And PMT as the leader of the Sorels?!?  Boggles the mind!)

But the staging, the framing of every shot, the color palette with the constant grey dirt background and the absolutely VICE-Y pops of neon.

Plus Olivia Brown and other Vice alums (pre-alums?) Bill Paxton and as then-named Mykel T. Williamson. 

And a soundtrack to KILL and DIE for.  So Vice-like in that the soundtrack itself is an essential character that you can almost taste.  Ry Cooder and Jimmy Iovine together...   As GREAT as they are, it just-almost- barely-hardly-a-nanometer-more-to-go achieves the same brain-stabbiing, musical fusion that Jan Hammer created on Vice.   


Streets of Fire.   Dead-eyed Michael Pare.  19 year old Diane Lane.  Willem DaFoe in a leather romper.  Vice actors, plus FEAR lead singer Lee Ving.  SOUNDTRACK.  Motorcycle, lever-action, leather-hat Amy Madigan-Hi-Power-FU.  

 

4 and a half stars.  Marco-Bob says check it out.

Again.

[MrsEvanFreed]

Back when Hollywood was trying to make Michael Pare happen.