Usually when I watch a movie based on book the movie is lame aside the book and I keep shouting "no no no, it didnt go that way!!" etc during seeing the movie or if i had seen the movie before the book after reading the book i never felt to see the movie again. But, the outsiders follows the story of the novel hand in hand, even some replics appears to be exactly same as in the book only little from the movie ending was missing but only so little it did not disturb me at all. Ive liked the book since the first time Ive readed it to the last times (and thats many many times between) as well as I love this movie from the each time I've seen it. No-one but coppola could create a movie like this from a book. I enjoy and I can also recommend you to read the book by S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders.