Streets of Fire (1984) - Where to Watch, Reviews, Trailers, Cast - Watchmode

Streets of Fire (1984)

Ex-soldier fights ruthless bikers to rescue kidnapped rock star. Perfect for action fans; avoid if you dislike intense, gritty drama.

Genres: Action

Cast

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Streets of Fire(1984)

PG
Movie1h 33mEnglishAction
6.9
User Score
64%
Critic Score
IMDb

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Overview

Raven Shaddock and his gang of merciless biker friends kidnap rock singer Ellen Aim. Ellen's former lover, soldier-for-hire Tom Cody, happens to be passing through town on a visit. In an attempt to save his star act, Ellen's manager hires Tom to rescue her. Along with a former soldier, they battle through dangerous cityscapes, determined to get Ellen back.

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Featured Comments/Tips

An absolute gem of a movie. A true rock n roll fairy tale and easily in my top 10 of favorite films of all time. It'#39;s so simple in structure and dialogue yet it is the only movie of its kind (that I know of). 80s music set in a 50s world, goons that terrorize a small town, clear cut villain and hero who fight for a rock n roll '#39;princess'#39; and two constantly bickering sidekicks. It sounds so formulaic, but it is different from anything you have seen before. A true classic that proves once again that you don'#39;t need a 100 million dollar production to do something special. Oh and the music... it'#39;s so good. '#39;Nowhere fast'#39; and '#39;Tonight is what it means to be young'#39; will make you wanna steal a car and wring it out.

Maybe I'#39;m a sucker, but I love this movie! Great music, a good story, graphic novel style violence, 50'#39;s Greasers mixed with 80'#39;s punk. Just a lot of fun to watch.

This movie is so unusual and so odd. The acting is wooden and the script is terrible, but this film is like a train wreck that you can't take your eyes away from the screen because it is that intriguing. I will also give props to the soundtrack as the music is quite good and rather catchy.

Winchester lever action to take on biker gang in the club. Maybe Henry rifle? Quite a few millennium falcon noises here and there.

Thanks to an interesting mix of 50s and 80s aesthetics, a few resounding slaps, and a multitude of exploding motorcycles, “Streets of Fire” never gets boring. It certainly helps that the movie opens with a concert sequence that is a real banger. Once the story gets going, it does wear a little thin, but never to the point of being really distracting. The latter also applies to lead actor Michael Paré's wooden acting, which somehow fits the movie's mood quite well. Meanwhile, Willem Dafoe proved to be able to convincingly portray psychopathic characters early on in his career. And with Diane Lane, Amy Madigan, and Deborah Van Valkenburgh, there are even a few interesting female characters. If you haven't seen “Streets of Fire” yet, you should definitely catch up, especially if you have a soft spot for 80s films.

Most 80's movie ever! Great movie!

In a very particular atmosphere, the typical good-evil confrontation.

Rock action/love story with its heart set in the 50s. Writing is a bit on the rough side and gets very bland real fast, but that'#39;s its biggest negative. Otherwise a fun adventure. Hard to believe this is Moranis'#39; first movie outside of the SCTV/Bob 'amp; Doug world. Fire Inc. closing out the movie is just the icing on the cake.

Such an awesome adult fairly tale. The music, the look, the actors and characters are just soo good. It'#39;s stylistic fable about a warrior rescuing an old flame. Such a great ending!

Overatted. Yeah it'#39;s stylish to a degree, but you can'#39;t polish a turd. The story is boring. The dialogue is boring. The characters are boring. The lead actor was crap. I got bored of watching some hollow characters walking the same dark wet streets, occasionally lit by fire or neon. The music was comfortably naff.

In a very particular atmosphere, the typical confrontation: good-bad.

Very under-rated film with epic songs written by the same man who wrote '#39;Total Eclipse of the Heart'#39; and most of Meat Loaf'#39;s best selling hits from '#39;Bat Out of Hell'#39; and '#39;Bat Out of Hell 2: Back from Hell'#34;. Look for the woman who voiced the D.J. in '#39;The Warriors'#39; as the train operator. '#34;OK, let'#39;s get down to it Boppers'#34;

Featured User Reviews

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. In part a rock opera set to the backdrop of blink blink blinkity blink neonvillle, an unnamed place that lives and breathes between 50s angst and 80s futurism, in others it's a straight forward road/mission movie headed up by an anti-hero taking notes from Snake Plissken whilst jostling for cool space with Kyle Reese. It's a film, that by Hill's own admission, is unashamedly a collage of things he finds cool in cinema. Yet this is not a detriment to the pic, the narrative is straightforward as can be and Hill throws everything he can into the mix, and it works. In essence it's a live action comic book, it knows it's just a film and has no pretencions to seem remotely real life. The look is wonderfully flamboyant and campy, where the hero and villain wear braces and PVC overalls respectively. The girls are a mixture of a teenage diva babe and a beer swilling roughneck babe. The city itself is a vibrant mix of colours and carnage, beauty and beats, and where the streets literally are on fire. Hill weighs in with his adroit flair for action, always kinetic, while the soundtrack rocks and the dialogue bubbles with self aware glee. Cast are super, some sexy and tough, others weaselly and weak, but all pumping the pop culture blood through the veins of the movie. With style and cool to burn, both only beaten out by the action quotient, Streets of Fire is an ode to live action fun. And watching it now you can see just how it has influenced many a film maker post its release. Streets of Fire, one bad ass bitch funky sex machine. 9/10

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 an untimely end when the Bombers, a motorcycle gang led by Raven Shaddock (Willem Dafoe), crash the party and kidnap Ellen. Raven absconds with Ellen to the Battery, a part of town the police don't dare go to; thus, Billy Fish (Moranis), Ellen's boyfriend/manager, offers Tom Cody (Michael Paré) $10,000 to rescue her — Billy doesn't know it yet, but Tom is Ellen's ex. The two are joined by McCoy (Amy Madigan), a tough girl with little tolerance for assholes. Once again, the action plays out like an MTV montage, but this is a deliberate aesthetic choice. The sets are elaborate and detailed but nonetheless clealy sets, and the actors’ look perfectly reflects the characters that have been assigned to them, which is very convenient because what we see is exactly what we get. Moranis, and this is also unsurprising, makes the most of his dialogue; he has to constantly look up to make eye contact with his interlocutors, but at the same time he invariably talks down to them. “I don't know what's more pathetic, the way you talk or the way you dress,” McCoy tells him — and since Billy is supposed to be pathetic, he also not only looks but also sounds exactly the way he's supposed to. As for Dafoe, with his leather fetish and Misfits hairdo, he endows Raven with a sort of teenage Count Orlok quality. The only real disappointment is Paré, and by extension, the romance between Tom and Ellen. We don't know what they see in each other other than their both physically attractive (which means that her relationship with Billy is actually built on a potentially more lasting foundation), and we don't care whether or not they end up together. Moreover, there linger some hard feelings between the two, but that doesn’t justify the movie’s one truly WTF moment. We’re all familiar with that cliché that sees the protagonist knock his sidekick out, ironically to prevent the latter from 'getting hurt' when all hell breaks loose; however, this is the only film I can think of wherein the supposed hero puts his fist through the face of the woman he supposedly loves. It’s true that Ellen behaves like a spoiled bitch when she finds out that her ex-boyfriend had the audacity to charge her current boyfriend for saving her life when even the police couldn’t be bothered to do something, but the whole thing is still uncalled for, and the fact that she, this essentially being a live-action cartoon, looks no worse for wear once she regains consciousness, just makes it worse — as if violence against women were a victimless crime. Joke’s on Billy, though; he’s the one left stuck with a famous girlfriend who sings longingly in public about the guy who toyed with her emotionally and assaulted her physically; on the other hand, as a manager he probably feels much less bad about collecting his 10%.

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