RUMBLE FISH (1983)
Updated: Dec 13, 2022
A Story of Small-Town Gangs Becomes a Metaphor for Imprisonment
Rating: B+
What is it that holds us back in life? Is it our pasts? Our natural disabilities? Our constant clinging to romantic ideas? 1983’s Rumble Fish offers answers to these questions as it tells the story of two brothers in a small city in Oklahoma. One is a young and naïve gang leader who looks at street gangs the way a kid fascinated by knights might look at medieval England; the other used to be a gang leader himself but has since become detached from just about everything. Something is keeping them from achieving their dreams.
The film was directed by legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, who basically ruled the cinema of the 1970s with his classics The Godfather, The Godfather: Part II, and Apocalypse Now, earning five Academy Awards over the course of the decade. Rumble Fish was made at a dark time in his career when people pretty much stopped going to see his movies. While nowhere near as magnificent as the films from his golden age, Rumble Fish grows on you with both its stylistic choices (it was filmed in black and white with only a few splashes of color here and there) and its ideas of imprisonment.
Matt Dillon and Mickey Rourke star as the two brothers. Dillon plays Rusty James, a tank top-sporting man who speaks in a kind of drawl and drones on about what he sees as the glory days of gangs, which he claims were struck down by drugs. Early in the film he accepts a fight from a rival hood and beats him bloody but gets a nasty cut from a weaponized piece of glass. Later he and some friends break into a lake house at night and have a raunchy party, during which he has sex. To him, this is what gang life is supposed to be; it doesn’t matter to him at the time that he has a great girlfriend, who is absent from the party.
Rourke plays the Motorcycle Boy, who used to rule the streets a while back. He’s been gone for two months on a trip to California. Now he’s returned, and a local police officer has his sunglass-covered eyes on him. We learn that Motorcycle Boy is colorblind and hearing-impaired, and he no longer seems interested in the gang world his brother adores. He really doesn’t seem interested in anything except the Siamese fighting fish in a local pet store. He tells Rusty that, during his trip to California, he met their mother, who walked out on their family when they were young and left them with their father, who since descended into alcoholism.
Rusty James is imprisoned by his ideas of a world that, according to both his friend Steve and the Motorcycle Boy, never really existed. Rusty finds the idea of street life thrilling, but the M.B. says that, for the most part, people were terrified of fighting in his day. Rusty’s love of gangs ultimately cost him his relationship with his girlfriend, Patty. Not only does she worry about him when he goes off to fight, but when she learns about his infidelity at the party, she naturally breaks up with him and later enters a relationship with Rusty’s friend Smokey, who tells Rusty that he lacks the brains to be a great gang leader.
It’s never made 100% clear what the Motorcycle Boy wants; if it was mentioned, I do not recall hearing it. Maybe he just feels trapped by his own status as king of the streets, as well as his physical impairments. In any case, his desires are represented by the sea. During his trip to California, he never made it to the sea because, he says, “California got in the way,” namely his mother. He also likes to hang out on a bridge over a river that leads directly to the sea. He projects his own desires onto the Siamese fighting fish-or “rumble fish”-which he equates to gang members who are kept apart by glass in their tank to keep them from fighting. At the story’s conclusion, Motorcycle Boy steals the fish from the store with the intention of taking them to the river; he wants them to have what he thinks he’ll never have. En route, he is shot dead by the officer who had been watching him, leaving a distraught Rusty James to finish the job; finally, R.J. takes M.B.’s motorcycle and drives it all the way to the sea, honoring his brother’s final wish.
If there is a major flaw with Rumble Fish, it is that it is good, but not great. The aesthetic is interesting, and the themes of self-imprisonment are endearing, but the movie feels like it could be even better, like it could go even further with its story and characters to become something truly special. Rusty James never really comes across as completely likable due to his antics and behavior, and Motorcycle Boy’s desires, as previously stated, are not entirely clear. But if one looks closer at the story and characters, they will see a flick that may not rank among the best of Coppola’s work, but is still an impressive work of art, nonetheless.
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Screenplay: S.E. Hinton, Francis Ford Coppola (Based on the novel by S.E. Hinton)
Producers: Francis Ford Coppola, Doug Claybourne, Fred Roos
Cast: Matt Dillon (Rusty James), Mickey Rourke (Motorcycle Boy), Diane Lane (Patty), Dennis Hopper (Father), Diana Scarwid (Cassandra), Vincent Spano (Steve), Nicolas Cage (Smokey), Chris Penn (B.J. Jackson), Laurence Fishburne (Midget)
Rated: R
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