Rusty James leads a dying gang in the shadow of his legendary, but absent, brother, The Motorcycle Boy. From a broken, unsupportive background, he willingly enters into a violent punch-up with another gang, but the events that follow begin to change his life.
by empire |
Published on
Release Date:
01 Jan 1983
Running Time:
94 minutes
Certificate:
18
Original Title:
Rumble Fish
This was the second Coppola adaptation of an SE Hinton novel (the first being The Outsiders, shot directly before this one), with Rourke as the older brother Dillon idolises, despite the fact all Rourke seems to do is spend most of his life searching for the next big fight.
Coppola seemed to trade in plot for style in this one, with the film shot in grainy black-and-white apart from the fish swimming around a tank in a shop window that the brothers often pass, which is in bright technicolor.
A bit too over-stylized to allow for any great involvement, the most interesting part of this is spotting the young actors before they became stars - most notably nephew-of-the-director Nicolas Cage.
