Walter Hill directed Streets of Fire as an attempt at making what he believed would’ve been the absolute best movie ever when he was a teen. He wrote the script by simply writing a checklist of things he loved as a kid, and making sure that the script included everything on the list. We’d put it on any top movie downloads list of great eighties flicks.
The film takes place in a city trapped somewhere between the nineteen fifties and the nineteen eighties, following Tom Cody, a war hero returning to his hometown upon hearing that his old girlfriend, Ellen Aim, has been kidnapped by Raven, the leader of the local biker gang. The film takes place in a beautiful, glitzy, rainy, neon lit city.
Something that really helps to define the movie is the music. Again, it blends the style of the fifties with the eighties, so you have those great old Doo Wop dance rock songs treated with a layer of synth rock and roll and dramatic female vocals. Ellen Aim’s band, The Attackers, features prominently in the film. One of these songs, I Can Dream About You, actually climbed up pretty high on the charts.
The story itself is pretty stock action film stuff, but this time it’s done with such incredible style that it feels fresh and all new. The girlfriend is kidnapped, the hero comes home to save her. We’ve seen this story hundreds of times before, but this time, it’s elevated to a sort of modern day, Rock and Roll fairy tale.
Hill has remained one of the most consistently competent and capable directors since his debut decades ago, and it’s really too bad that he doesn’t often get the respect he deserves. He tends to focus on action flicks, which tends not to earn the same sort of respect as other genres, but Hill really is one of the best directors out there right now.
Besides the rock and roll, the film also has a score written by blues legend Ry Cooder. The earthy, bluesy feel of his slide guitar offers a contrast to the glossy feel of the rest of the soundtrack, and drives home the “down to earthness” of Tom Cody, the character most frequently accompanied by Cooder’s guitar score.
If you want a great double feature, watch Streets of Fire alongside The Warriors. The Warriors is, similarly, a sort of Rock and Roll, street fable, but takes the concept in a rougher, tougher, more gritty direction, while Streets of Fire is a little more glossy, a little more pretty and colorful in comparison to The Warriors and its title street gang heroes.
The movie was original intended to be the first in a trilogy, but, unfortunately, the film didn’t perform at the box office quite as well as expected, so the sequels, The Far City and The Return of Tom Cody, never got funding. Luckily, the film has become a cult legend over time, so it has, of course, earned the respect it deserves as an all time action movie classic and one of the best films made in the nineteen eighties, but it’s unfortunate that that didn’t happen back when fans could’ve gotten a sequel out of the deal.
The search term “Movies Online Download” is a good one to use for movie download information. Movie Download Sites Find out where to buy movie downloads by searching “Buy Films”. Who would have thought 20 years ago that we would be downloading movies off websites?
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