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Streets of Fire
Walter Hill's "rock and roll fable" (1984) remains a marginally personal film despite near-fatal doses of rock-video imagery and self-conscious myth making. Hill has tried to adapt his existential action-film ethos to the demands of the teenage market, and the results are grotesque: a group of gangly adolescents (Michael Pare, Diane Lane, Amy Madigan) aping the romantic fatalism of 40s film noir. The characters do not seem old enough to be fully entitled to presents, much less to dark pasts that must be overcome. Hill is incapable of completely kowtowing to commercial formulas, but he comes very close here, assuming a rock 'em-sock 'em Spielberg pacing and a space-fracturing visual style that makes even the rare dialogue scenes look like the production numbers from Flashdance. But enough of Hill's basic moral seriousness remains to suggest that all isn't lost. With Rick Moranis. PG, 93 min. |
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