Streets of Fire

4/18/2015

Bombers, Blasters, Attackers and Streets of Fire. Streets of Fire is directed by Walter Hill who also co-writes the screenplay with Larry Gross. It stars Michael Paré, Diane Lane, Rick Moranis, Amy Madigan and Willem Dafoe. Music is scored by Ry Cooder and cinematography is by Andrew Laszlo. When the lead singer of Ellen Aim and the Attackers is kidnapped by biker gang The Bombers, her ex-soldier of fortune boyfriend is contacted and hired to go get her back... There were a couple of movies released in 1984 by maverick directors that were frowned upon at the time, but are now significantly held in high regard and define the saying "cult movie". One was Alex Cox's Repo Man, the other was Walter Hill's Streets of Fire. Streets of Fire is a bastard hybrid of ideas and influences.

9/15/2022

Streets of Fire is like a feature-length Jim Steinman music video (admittedly not that big of a stretch), which makes all the sense in the world considering the singer/songwriter's cinematic bent. Steinman penned the opening and closing songs (one of which is the anthem “Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young”), while the score is a Ry Cooder leftover from another movie (and you could certainly do a lot worse than that). To no one’s surprise, the music is by far the best thing about the film (making me wish it was a musical proper). The film opens with Ellen Aim and the Attackers in concert performing “Nowhere Fast.” Never mind the unfortunate band name; Ellen looks and sounds great thanks to Diane Lane’s stage presence and Laurie Sargent’s and Holly Sherwood’s voices. The show comes to a