September 24, 2007
This film is subtitled "A Rock & Roll Fable."
Yes. This film instantly caught my attention. It starts with just a Ry Cooder guitar riff and the title and subtitle flashing onscreen, just white text on black, "Another time, another place..." a pounding beat gives way through an a...( read more)mazing jagged wipe to neon lights flashing and glowing everywhere over the rain-wet asphalt of a city street. We see the flashing spotlights and constant jumpcuts of the street, a crowd, backstage, two cops in a car...I'm hooked. This is the kind of environment that appeals to something in me I can't name or describe easily. I've tried it before many times (I referenced it in another view when I brought up Bob Seger's "Mainstreet") and have never succeeded. We suddenly find ourselves watching "Ellen Aim and the Attackers" performing onstage, and the song they're playing is "Nowhere Fast," which was written by Jim Steinman (whose songwriting I could hear in this, and if you don't know that name, he wrote the songs Meat Loaf performed on all three Bat Out of Hell albums). I must get this soundtrack. Steinman's songs are exactly like this film--extremely loud and kinetic--filled with bright colours and energy that should seem laughably ridiculous yet are carried off with the right tone and approach so that they come off as damn good fun and entertainment.
It's rare for a film to engage me so quickly like this, though, admittedly, films from the 80s have the greatest chance of doing it, because I have mentioned many a time my affection for the filmstock, cinematography and all around culture of the 80s, despite the fact that I didn't really ever see that decade so well. Of course, I did walk in knowing Willem DaFoe played Raven, villainous leader of the Bombers gang, and I'm a big fan of DaFoe, so that worked well enough in and of itself. I also knew Walter Hill coming in, after watching The Warriors, and a few other films--but this one is closest to that 1979 classic oddity in atmosphere and ideology.
It made me a little wistful to think of the fact that these appeal to unusual elements of humanity, and probably did not remain successful enough that, even if he had ideas for them, Hill could have continued to make more. In fact, I just read this was intended to be first of a trilogy. Damnation.
Anyway, what we have here is the kidnapping of Ellen Aim (Diane Lane) as perpetrated by Raven and his Bombers. Aim's manager Billy Fish (Rick Moranis, of all people) hires Tom Cody, a local street tough, to bring her back after his sister Reva (played by Deborah Van Valkenburgh, who I last saw as Mercy in...yes, The Warriors) asks him to come back to town because she knows how much Cody (somewhat secretly) cares about Ellen. Michael Paré plays Cody, and I was reminded of Michael Beck playing Swan in The Warriors--an actor who doesn't have outstanding chops, but can hold his weight and who looks appropriately 'bad-ass.' He eventually shows it when another gang--The Roadmasters--appear and try to start a fight in his sister's diner.
Which is as good a point as any to note that this movie notes its distant setting early on for a reason--the Roadmasters drive up in a car straight out of the 1950s, and of course have early rocker hair (think Grease)...or at least, they do until Cody wipes the floor with the lot of them. Reva's diner feels like it, too, is from that decade, as does much of the movie, but we have neon lights, a somewhat modern subway, gated drums in the music, apparent racial equality and so on. It's carried perfectly, and much of the period materials look more like they're from another period than films trying to be in the '50s (...think Grease).
Ry Cooder's great rollicking score plays the perfect balance to the films cutting, sometimes with cuts between solid black and action in time with the music, or in keeping with a car chase or whatever is occurring onscreen, really adding to the feel that "Rock & Roll Fable" isn't just nonsense added because it sounds nice.
We've got a fun cast here--again, Rick Moranis, who seems oddly unnatural in his part as nebbish, selfish, arrogant manager--the man could do unbelievably accurate impersonations if you ever watch SCTV, but here he seems like he has nothing to hold onto and just reels out his lines. But, Walter Hill knows how to make even that work. When things seem a little wooden, there's still an energy to the performances and a way of filming them that makes them fit and work in spite of themselves. We soon see Bill Paxton in a typically excitable role as bartender Clyde. He doesn't overpower anyone thankfully, and he's perfect for the role (reminiscent in some ways of Severen in Near Dark). Amy Madigan plays McCoy--apparently originally intended to be a male role, until Madigan commented on what a great part it was--the 'sidekick' to Cody's hero, who is also an ex-soldier with an expertise in cars. She's got a wild fluff of blonde hair under a small leather hat that works for the image. Ed Begley, Jr. makes a seemingly random appearance as a helpful bum when they head for "the Battery" where the Bombers make their home at Torchie's bar. I was also happy to see Elizabeth "E.G." Daily make an appearance as "Baby Doll," an admirer of Ellen Aim's. Daily you may know as Dottie (if you have my kind of taste in movies) or from her recent turn as a prostitute in The Devil's Rejects...or as the voice of Tommy Pickles on Rugrats.
I have no idea whether to recommend a movie like this. I absolutely loved it, but I know it's one that many would look at and laugh and call terribly bad. I don't get that approach--the film has so much heart and will and energy that the drawbacks simply disappear and don't matter, in my mind. But, that's the best I can do, I guess--say, here, try it. It's worth it.
My final note for this review: I do wish I had gotten the original cover for this DVD. It was illustrated (painted, possibly?) and not a photograph. The original logo was also better. I mean, I'd say Michael Paré's a pretty good looking guy and all, but that painting was great.
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