Wild Style (1983)

88% of critics liked it
(17 reviews)
86% of users liked it
(3,854 ratings)

This docudrama celebrates the colorful lives of teens who live in the South Bronx. There they are seen break dancing, creating graffiti art, and listening to raucous rap. The slim story centers on Zoro, who likes to spray-paint subway cars. He gets a break when he is hired to decorate a platform for… More This docudrama celebrates the colorful lives of teens who live in the South Bronx. There they are seen break dancing, creating graffiti art, and listening to raucous rap. The slim story centers on Zoro, who likes to spray-paint subway cars. He gets a break when he is hired to decorate a platform for an upcoming rap concert. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Rating, Runtime: R, 1 hr. 22 min.
Directed By: Charlie Ahearn
Written By: Charlie Ahearn
Genres: Documentary, Drama, Musical & Performing Arts

In Theaters: Mar 18, 1983 Limited
On DVD: Oct 22, 2002
Studio: First Run Features

Critic Reviews

Sara Cardace, New York Magazine
Charlie Ahearn's groundbreaking film about hip-hop, graffiti, break dancing, and rap in eighties New York celebrates its 25th anniversary with a new 35-mm. print.
Vincent Canby, New York Times
Wild Style lacks a lot of the style of the people in it, but it never neutralizes their vitality.
Sasha Frere-Jones, Village Voice
Hip-hop rolls on tractor treads now, unafraid to colonize those who hesitate, but in 1982 it was small, self-selecting, and as specific to New York as the World Trade Center.
Ted Shen, Chicago Reader
The pacing is slow -- inexcusable in a film about music -- except when hip-hop takes over, and Ahearn wisely gives plenty of screen time to the likes of Busy Bee, Rock Steady Crew, and Fab Five Freddy.
Melissa Anderson, Time Out New York
Wild Style is just as important a New York City musical as On the Town, so vital and exuberant are its scenes of a burgeoning cultural moment.
Derek Malcolm, This is London
A poorly-acted shambles.
Sukhdev Sandhu, Daily Telegraph
It's great to see again this bolt of ghetto joy, a kind of updated West Side Story, that shows hip-hop as a living, breathing expression of cultural resistance rather than a crunky, cheerless set of cruddy grunts and boasts from which to make money.
Phelim O'Neill, Guardian [UK]
Nothing else comes close to capturing the atmosphere of the early days of hip-hop and spraycan art, of the burned-out and derelict Bronx.
Wendy Ide, Times [UK]
This unpolished but authentic film, a drama with the honesty of a documentary, shows hip-hop pure and unvarnished.
David Mattin, BBC
The acting is stilted, and the story almost non-existent. But that isn't the point, Wild Style is a cult classic - indisputably the most important hip hop movie, ever.
David Jenkins, Time Out
Mixing early-'80s nostalgia with mild social anthropology, the film successfully crystallises the optimism and vivacity of the early New York hip hop scene and suggests that film and TV portrayals of the Bronx as a savage and inhospitable hellhole were pe
Richard Luck, Film4
A fascinating study of an era that now feels so remote, it might as well have occurred on another planet.
Marjorie Baumgarten, Austin Chronicle
Shot independently, this film captures a movement in its genesis.
Keith Phipps, AV Club
It's a fascinating time capsule, worth examining for anyone interested in the cultural roots of hip hop.