Review of Rumble Fish (1983) by Lasttimeisaw — 19 Nov 2014

After his illustrious heydays in the 70s, 1980s seems to be a more productive period for Francis Ford Coppola when he delved into more scaled-down projects with more leeway for his artistic creation. RUMBLE FISH is a perfect example of this kind, released back-to-back with Coppola’s other film THE OUTSIDERS, both adapted from S.

E. Hinton’s novel and met with mixed reviews at then. Nevertheless in retrospect, RUMBLE FISH is a sharply glossy achievement whose sterling lustre of the coloured fish against the canvas of high-contrast Black & White cinematography anticipated masterpieces like SCHINDLER’S LIST (1993, 9/10), and it is also a star-maker for Matt Dillon’s bad boy image and etches Mickey Rourke’s harrowing force of personality mixed with unfathomable mystique and magnetic sex appeal on the silver screen for eternity.