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Show i ::WW:: n&eefl WawrM ':T y; K'!- ..!! by Rick Brouli 'Rumblefish' is a unique, moody picture of city life ' A Classic Recommended Good double-feature double-feature material Time-killer For masochists V only Rumblefish "Rumblefish" is a return to an old style of film. The big city streets here are wet and dank. The screen is boiling with fog and smoke. In black and white, the light provides eerie, greasy illumination il-lumination to buildings and people. The look is reminiscent of the exotic melodramas of the 1940s the type of movie that was called "film noir." And director Francis Ford Coppola has a reason for using it. We seem to be back in "West Side Story" country, as young Rusty-James (Matt Dillon) leads his troops through the streets. Actually, the old youth gangs and their wars have died out. A truce has been imposed on the neighborhood neighbor-hood by the last powerful gang leader, the Motorcycle Boy (Mickey Rourke), who is also Rusty-James' big brother. Rusty idolizes him, and desires to emulate his brother by reviving the old gangs. But most people feel that he has more brawn than brains. Even Motorcycle Boy tells him, "You'll see the gangs come back if you live that long." I To the punks, Motorcycle Boy is ancient. "He doesn't look like he's 21," says one. "He looks like he's 25!" Although he keeps a lid on things, he doesn't really assert himself. There's nothing noth-ing he wants to assert. Motorcycle Boy is color blind, so the black-and-white style is his vision. But it's also his state of mind a grayish, hazy limbo. The film is more atmos-phere atmos-phere than plot And if a scene doesn't t-em to go anywhere, that's because Motorcycle Boy himself is stuck. This picture might be called the last of the "Matt Dillon trilogy" three films starring Dillon based on the works of S.E. Hinton (Hinton, herself appears in "Rumblefish" "Rumble-fish" as a hooker). The first two films missed the mark. "Tex" was amiable ami-able but meandering, and seemed to get an abundance of young-life crises. "The Outsiders," directed by Coppola, Cop-pola, approached the ludicrous, ludi-crous, The young hoods were noble little souls who were helpless but conscious of their tragic fates. The kids dreamed about "Gone With the Wind," so Coppola viewed their world that way, with city streets lit like views of Tara. You couldn't figure out what the hell these movies were trying to get. But "Rumblefish" hits the right tone at last an amazing mixture in which the kids are children, romantics (exposed (ex-posed with touches of bizarre bi-zarre humor), and young toughs all at once. Dillon as Rusty-James is the focus here. The picture is about him seeing a way beyond his brother's deadend dead-end path. His image is Junior League Macho but his real talent is to show someone like Rusty-James, who starts out cocky and swashbuckling, and becomes be-comes more vulnerable as he loses his shaky position as King of the Hill. Part of his fall from power is losing his girlfriend, played by Diane Lane as a smart blend of Sensitive and Superficial. She doesn't like Rusty's tough life, but her new boyfriend is another ambitious hood who wants to lead a gang. Mickey Rourke as Motorcycle Motor-cycle Boy gives one of the movie's best performances. Among the tough-talking kids his voice is like a whisper. And he looks like a whisper, even though he can beat up anyone in the story. The only exception is the tough cop (a nice cameo by William Smith) who you know is fated to destroy Motorcycle Boy. Diana Scarwid is Motorcycle Motor-cycle Boy's languishing girlfrienda girl-frienda teary-eyed junkie and is almost bathetic. But she fits with him. She's a ghost too. Rusty's square friend is Steve (Vincent Spano) who has blond hair, and dresses in Wally Cleaver clothes (he's the kind of person whose shirt-tail flops out when he's drunk.). But he's smarter than he looks. Spano fits in a pair of Keds so easily, you have trouble believing he's the same guy who played the greasy-haired greasy-haired Sheik of "Baby, It's You." The best casting here is Dennis Hopper the only survivor from the 50s generation gene-ration of delinquents as the drunken father of Dillon and Rourke. He's a professorial figure, fallen from grace. (His wife's desertion years ago set him off on a lifetime bender.) He can be self-piteous, self-piteous, romantic, and show both understanding and disgust dis-gust for his son, Motorcycle Boy. Hopper shows his emotions in flickers. (Note the scene where he's the solitary soli-tary drunk in a bar. As his kids burst in, he gives a little lit-tle shiver of irritation. ) Coppola shows his world as both hellishly and handsomely hand-somely designed. There are lots of beautiful light and shadow configurations. Characters are balanced in three-shots, or in foregrounds fore-grounds against backgrounds. back-grounds. The only color in the picture comes from the "rumblefish" Siamese fighting fish who attack their own reflections in the mirror. mir-ror. They are the only things , that stir Motorcycle Boy's emotions. He wants to free them from their pet-shop aquarium and turn them back into the river. Old-fashioned symbolism? Maybe. In 20 years, "Rumblefish" will be considered con-sidered either an outlandish mood piece, or a unique, beautiful film. I'm betting on the latter. |