Walter Hill is one of the most incredible directors of the last thirty or forty years, always capable of banging out a great, unpretentious, action packed flick. In the mid eighties, he sat down with a notebook and wrote a checklist of everything he wanted to see in the greatest movie ever, and the result was Streets of Fire, one of the all time cult eighties movie downloads.
The movie follows Tom Cody, a soldier who’s been discharged and returns to his old hometown when Ellen Aim, his old sweetheart, and a pop music sensation, is kidnapped by Raven, the leader of the local biker gang. The film works on the level of fantasy, mixing fifties and eighties aesthetics into a new kind of setting. The environment the characters inhabit is surreal and dreamlike, and the cinematography is beautiful, with rainy streets and neon signs dominating the screen.
The movie is really defined by the music, again, blending fifties and eighties styles. You’ll hear these great old fashioned fifties rock tunes with a layer of synth and aggressive, eighties style vocals. It really invents its own style of pop and Rock and Roll, even having led to the hit single, I Can Dream About You.
The story is pretty traditional, standard stuff, but because of the feel, the sound of the movie, this old story of kidnapping and rescue is elevated to the level of Rock and Roll Fairy Tale.
Walter Hill has remained one of the great directors of the last few decades, but rarely gets the respect he really deserves as such. He continues to knock it out of the park with more recent films like Undisputed, and earns acclaim with each new film, but is rarely mentioned alongside Scorsese or Brian dePalma, which is truly a shame, as he’s certainly one of the most entertaining directors alive.
The pop and rock soundtrack is contrasted by Ry Cooder’s guitar score, which adds an extra layer of earthiness to the character of Tom Cody. The atmosphere and soundtrack are largely glitzy and fast paced, so the more laid back, gritty sound of Cooder’s slide guitar adds a certain contrast that really helps both sides of the soundtrack compliment each other.
If you haven’t seen The Warriors yet, Streets of Fire makes an excellent double feature with that film, as both take place in an elevated reality, a sort of fantasy world, with The Warriors taking it in a more gritty direction while Streets of Fire takes the concept into a more glitzy, glamorous direction. The two fantasy worlds feel akin to one another.
The movie was original intended to be the first in a trilogy, but, unfortunately, the film didn’t perform at the box office quite as well as expected, so the sequels, The Far City and The Return of Tom Cody, never got funding. Luckily, the film has become a cult legend over time, so it has, of course, earned the respect it deserves as an all time action movie classic and one of the best films made in the nineteen eighties, but it’s unfortunate that that didn’t happen back when fans could’ve gotten a sequel out of the deal.
Many other instruments such as the piano and saxophone have tried for years to emulate the sound of a guitar finger tapping. How To Download Home Movies For me, it’s always been writing melody that seems to come naturally. Legitimate sites are usually those with payment requirements and secured payment systems.
No related posts.
Comments on this entry are closed.