A gang of violent bikers kidnaps a popular rock diva straight from a concert. The singer’s former beau, named Tom Cody, agrees to return the girl and declares war on the villainous motorcyclists.
4k movies reviews
How long does it take a film to keep the viewer’s attention on its person, forcing them to put off other things? I’ve never really thought about it, but in a speed contest, Streets on Fire would be out of contention. All they had to do was put two titles on the screen, “A Rock and Roll Tale” and “Another Time, Another Place.” And when “Nowhere Fast” played a minute later, the question of whether or not to watch this movie was self-defeating.
Like its Warriors, which came out five years earlier and combined various elements, Streets on Fire also combines many styles and genres: the fifties/sixties with music and B-movies from the eighties, action flicks with westerns, comics and musicals. But despite the many little pieces, the film doesn’t get tangled up in itself, forcing them to interact skillfully with each other.
Putting a story that fits on a napkin at the head of the table, Walter Hill went about his favorite business of the day, giving screen time to looting charismatic characters, each one begging to be on the cover of a comic book. Hill has always distinguished himself by his dislike of gray colors: his films have only white and black – extremely positive and extremely negative characters. They have only one thing in common – a boundless love of problem-solving with numerous means of effectively and brutally destroying the enemy’s manpower.
In Streets on Fire, every element screams its hypertrophied and comic-book origins. Whether it’s dialogue that takes up no more than the same napkin, which is eerily clichéd even before the 1980s, but spoken with colossal seriousness, or characters that look like they came off the pages of an action-movie textbook. Here, even the final fight between the protagonist and antagonist takes place not with fists or knives, but with pickaxes. There are a lot of clichés here. There’s a lot of convention. There’s a lot of unrealistic and illogical. But, gosh, how great it all looks together!
You can, of course, grumble and rant that the picture was outdated the year it came out, that even before its time it looked too poppy, the second half is noticeably losing to the first half, the ending is incredibly drawn out, but does it really matter when you watch the power-killing dialogue between Defoe and Pare:
– Why don’t you tell me your name?
– Tom Coady. Nice to meet you.
– I’m coming for her. And I’m also coming after you.
– I’m sure you will. I’ll be waiting.
It makes me want to jump up and down on the couch, screaming in Bender’s voice, “oh, yeah!
Hill’s picture may be hopelessly outdated, but if the film, despite its considerable age, thrills from start to finish, and is watched with interest by those who grew up in the eighties, as well as those who were not born then, this is perhaps the most important recognition of a film that has passed the most difficult test – the test of time.
The verdict: another time, another place is a rock ‘n’ roll tale.
Info Blu-ray
Video
Codec: HEVC / H.265 (81.7 Mb/s)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR10
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Audio
English: Dolby TrueHD with Dolby Atmos 7.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 4.1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: Dolby Digital 5.1
Subtitles
English, English SDH.
