Francis Ford Coppola’s brotherhood drama earns its grand manner through Matt Dillon, Mickey Rourke and forceful black-and-white photography. The dialogue can be painfully solemn, but Rusty James’s longing makes this worth the indulgence.
Rumble Fish is a good film that sometimes makes us wish Francis Ford Coppola would leave a strong image alone. He takes Rusty James’s longing to match his brother’s reputation seriously, without making it look like a sensible ambition. The heightened black-and-white world suits a boy for whom being respected matters quite this much. The film falters when the dialogue insists on spelling out the significance, but the brothers give us enough reason to stay.
Matt Dillon gives Rusty James a need for approval that makes the swagger touching. His ambition is so narrow that the performance could easily become a joke at the boy’s expense; instead, we can see the hurt in wanting to be somebody else. Mickey Rourke plays The Motorcycle Boy with a weariness that makes that ambition look still more mistaken. The casting works because we can understand why Rusty James admires him while also seeing why imitation will get him nowhere.
Stephen H. Burum’s cinematography is the strongest reason to accept the exaggeration. The tilted angles and hard black-and-white images make adolescent unease visible, while the time-lapse clouds over Tulsa suggest a world moving faster than these boys can manage. We felt unexpectedly sad watching those clouds hurry past. The boys’ claims to importance suddenly seemed small, and the photography brought us closer to their fear of being left behind than the more solemn speeches did.
Dean Tavoularis’s production design helps make the town feel enclosed, with little promise of an ordinary life beyond the brothers’ troubles. We would not come here looking for an unvarnished picture of a neighbourhood; the artificiality is too deliberate for that. Barry Malkin’s editing likewise gives the visual flourishes considerable weight, sometimes at the expense of the drama’s momentum. At 94 minutes, the film is short enough, but there are stretches when we become conscious of how carefully everything has been arranged.
Stewart Copeland’s score gives the film a nervous forward push when the people seem stuck. The music keeps us alert even when the dialogue grows heavy. That heaviness is the chief problem with the screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola and S.E. Hinton, adapting S.E. Hinton’s novel. Too many lines sound composed for posterity, and the actors have to work around them to make the speakers seem young.
We would take its awkward seriousness over a gang drama that merely congratulates its young men on looking dangerous. Francis Ford Coppola allows Rusty James’s admiration to remain persuasive even as it looks misguided. There is no need to endorse his idea of manhood to recognise how much he depends on it. The mannerisms are easier to forgive when Matt Dillon and Mickey Rourke make that dependence felt, rather than leaving the dialogue to explain it again.
Rumble Fish asks for patience with its solemnity, and occasionally spends more than we would like to give it. Still, Matt Dillon and Mickey Rourke keep the relationship painful and believable, even when the words resist them. We recommend it for the performances and the restless images, with fair warning about the speeches. There is no obligation to admire every flourish.
