Streets of Fire 1984 is Walter Hill over-directing a bit

Blender Dumbass
October 13, 2025

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Some actors cannot produce emotion, which looks very bad. But a lot of bad actors over-act. Which is not good either. Today, watching the 1984 Walter Hill movie Streets of Fire, I think I finally saw an over-directed film. Is this a bad thing? No! The film is a blast. But it is not your typical movie. It is trying so hard that it crosses the line into avant-garde cinema, while remaining a dumb action film.

The first thing you notice, as the film starts, is the editing. The film is not quite on the level of meme-worthy Bollywood television, but it is very fucking intense. And the weird thing is, in this film the insane editing helps the movie. It makes it flow with the stupidest amount of energy.

The film opens on this cool ass rock concert where Ellen ( Diane Lane ) performs a catchy as fuck rock song. During which a gang of bikers break into the auditorium an patiently wait for her to finish her song. The leader of this gang is revealed to be Raven Shaddock, played by the young Willem Dafoe. As soon as she stops singing, the gang of bikers kidnap her right from the stage, kicking her boyfriend manager Billy ( played by @Ozoned aka Rick Moranis ) and a bartender named Clyde ( Bill Paxton ) in the process.

The plot is about our amazing manly man, serious as fuck, action hero dude rescuing Ellen. And then securing her from the revenge of the gang. Basically he is gonna beat the shit out of Willem Dafoe. Walter Hill didn't want middle aged ( at the time ) Clint Eastwood, who could have worked to be the guy, if the film was shot during the 60s or something. His Dirty Harry is kind of the perfect match to the character this movie is going for. But the catch is, this manly man, serious as fuck, action hero, should be young. Like in his 20s or something.

Maybe if Hill took a lesson from James Cameron he would have used Arnold Schwarzenegger. He was a bit old for the role, but he would have fit perfectly with the level of silliness of this movie.

The original actor Hill was thinking about was the young Tom Cruise who I can see working in this role, with a few minor tweaks. He has to be more ironically self-serious for this to work, like what Martin Scorsese did to him 2 years later in The Color of Money. And the script actually kind of tries to make him be that kind of slightly not-self-aware character. Yet I believe in the 80s there is only one true perfect casting for this role. And it is Nicolas Cage. I mean come on. Imagine this movie with fucking Nick Cage being this amazing manly man, serious as fuck, action hero motherfucker. That would have been just simply amazing. In all the ( ironic / not-ironic ) ways.

Instead the movie has Michael Paré as our hero, who tries to sound tough, but with whom it doesn't work. His face is too nice-looking for it. And he doesn't even have a psychopathic personality like Cruise, Cage, or Dafoe. So he is kind of miscast in the film. Yet, because he is miscast, the film is kind of ironically entertaining. What the film is trying to make this character be is so utterly unrelated to how this guy looks, that you have sometimes the funniest of moments.

Another strange casting choice is Rick Moranis. Moranis is a comedy actor. Yet this is trying to be this dramatic epic tale. Unless... unless the movie is a parody of dramatic epic action films. The film is so fucking silly at times, you start to wander how comedic it was intended to be in the first place. Maybe the casting of Rick Moranis is a clue of sorts. Yet in the same time, the director is not using Moranis as intended. He is not an obvious buffoon. He has moments of out-right badassery. And the best description this character would have is something like a comically not-self-aware rich asshole.

Dafoe is perfectly cast. Diane Lane is perfectly cast. Amy Madigan who plays this tough lady sidekick is perfectly cast. The acapella quartet boys are very well cast. Just somehow these two motherfuckers, Moranis and Paré feel somehow out of place in this movie.

While the film's editing and action set-pieces are well done, something about the backgrounds screams fakery. The whole film seems to be shot on a sound-stage pretending to be a town. The funny thing is, it was actually shot for real on real locations. It's so weird. Like the director specifically went for a style that made everything look a bit faker than it really was. This is not terrible per se. And the movie manages to look very good despite this. Yet something about it feels like I'm watching the 1982 Francis Ford Coppola film One from the Heart, which was a very bazaar avant-garde movie from Coppola shot exclusively on sound stages.

Speaking of Coppola and how strangely Coppolaesque it feels, Diane Lane at the time of this movie just made 2 Coppola films back to back. She was in The Outsiders alongside Cruise, by the way, and then she was in Rumble Fish. And then right after Streets of Fire she made a yet another Coppola film The Cotton Club. Francis literally shoved her into everything at that point in time. And then smack in the middle of this comes Walter Hill and makes a movie with her. That coincidentally reminds another Coppola picture stylistically? Strange...

With all the flaws and strangeness of this film, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Maybe I enjoyed it more because it was a slightly strange movie. Maybe because it was over-directed. Maybe because it has such a crazy editing. And maybe even because of the few miscast actors. And if so, are those flaws actually flaws? Or since I like those things so much, they were kind of actually good decisions from a certain perspective...

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