Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		5.0
Overall		4.5

Streets of Fire Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson May 3, 2017

The opening titles that preface Walter Hill's Streets of Fire announce that the picture will be "A Rock and Roll Fable" set in "another time, another place." The first images of neon reflected in a puddle, the exterior of a fifties-looking concert theater, and some distinctive characteristics of an older town are reminiscent of similar uses of light and color that Frances Ford Coppola employed in his strikingly gorgeous One from the Heart (1981). Like Coppola's The Outsiders and Rumble Fish, both released in 1983, Streets of Fire is a drama about young people (a majority of the cast was less than thirty) from a bygone era but is pretty unique because it broke some new ground in 1984 by incorporating different genres such as the rock musical, neo-noir, and the cinematized graphic novel. As the camera moves inside the concert hall/auditorium, singer Ellen Aim (Diane Lane) is performing with her band, The Attackers. The crowd is raucous and enjoying the ballad but a ragtag of biker boys known as The Bombers are ready to crash the party. Hill and his cinematographer Andrew Laszlo create a remarkable introduction for the gang's leader, Raven Shaddock (Willem Dafoe). Hill and Laszlo very gradually reveal the visage of Raven, whose face has an almost blanched look in the hazy auditorium. Raven and his goons storm up on stage and take Ellen along with them. Hill then introduces us to the vigilante-like Tom Cody (Michael Paré) whose mission it will be to rescue Ellen form The Bombers. Tom rides the subway and as his reticent body language suggests, he is kind of a Leonesque laconic character but can be prone to violent behavior if provoked. It turns out that Ellen is a former girlfriend of Tom's and through his sister, Reva Cody (Deborah Van Valkenburgh), agrees to meet Billy Fish (Rick Moranis), Ellen's current boyfriend and manager. Billy offers Tom a reward of $10,000 if he can successfully get Ellen back. Tom acquiesces to the offer and joins up with tough, no-nonsense McCoy (Amy Madigan), who like Tom is an ex-soldier.

Ellen Aim and Tom Cody converse during one of the film's concert sequences.

Commentators on Streets of Fire have noted the structural similarities to the classic Western and I am inclined to agree. Ellen is the beautiful young girl captured by a lawless bunch and Tom is the outsider who rides into town to try to save her. But Hill and co-writer Larry Gross differentiate their screenplay by giving Tom some family ties and a past with the female captive. On the other side, Willem Dafoe brings the requisite machismo as Raven in a terrifically sinister performance. Dafoe's acting in Streets of Fire reportedly made a great impression on Oliver Stone, who cast Dafoe as Sergeant Elias in Platoon (1986) based on his work here. Dafoe is so good that I can only wish that Hill had expanded his screen time. The biker boys scenes in the movie owe a lot to the Stanley Kramer-produced The Wild One (1953) in both costume design and choreography. This is what I think Hill and Gross were aiming for, although they could have made the material grittier had they not been so obligated by Universal Studios to maintain a PG rating. Another weakness is that there is a relative unbalance between the action and concert scenes. Streets of Fire's now-classic sound track contains ten original songs which I believe could have been spotlighted more aside from the two scenes that bookend the film. Even though the script is not a high point, Streets of Fire has aged fairly well and its visuals have influenced a whole slew of diverse films in the intervening years.

Streets of Fire Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Streets of Fire officially arrives on US Blu-ray as spine #16 in Shout Select's catalog. Shout delivers a two-disc Collector's Edition with the main feature on its own BD-50 and all the bonus materials on a separate BD-50. Shout gives Hill's movie an AVC-encode, presenting it in the aspect ratio of 1.85:1 which mirrors its theatrical exhibition. Shout's deluxe package marks the film's fifth edition on Blu-ray, following Koch Media in Germany, Second Sight in the UK, Pulp Video in Italy, and Wild Side Video in France (not to mention Universal's 2007 HD DVD). Shout advertises this transfer as a new 2K scan of the interpositive. This transfer differs in several respects compared to the Koch and Second Sight releases. Koch removed quite a bit of the film grain and also had some edge enhancement issues. The UK version has relatively coarse grain in places but in others, as my colleague Dr. Svet Atanasov notes in his review of Second Sight's disc, has moderate to heavy noise. Thankfully, the grain structure is more consistent on Shout's disc. Color saturation is also more stable and contrast has been improved. For the first reel and a half or so, there is a good amount of white speckles and dust that percolate the image. These anomalies taper off for the rest of the film but some dirt crops up periodically. Additionally, there are minor scratches that appear in the frame for a millisecond. Overall, the transfer is at least a level up from the other BDs but would have been better had Shout cleaned up these source flaws. My score is 3.75.

Streets of Fire Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Shout Select has supplied a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track and a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 from the movie's original stereo mix. On Koch's BD, the German label only included a 5.1 option with an average bitrate of 2253 kbps and a bit depth of 16. Second Sight included the stereo track as an LPCM 2.0 (1536 kbps, 16-bit) and also the 5.1 track (2478 kbps, 16-bit). The Digital Fix's Mike Sutton, who saw Streets of Fire in the cinema back in '84, surmises that the UK's 5.1 is extracted from the 70mm 6-track mix. This also seems to be the case with Shout's rendering of the film's sound track in 5.1 but with a big difference. Shout's audio streams of both mixes are superior but this is particularly the case with the 5.1, which blows the other two discs out of the water. Shout encodes the 5.1 track at a whopping 4707 kbps with a bit depth of 24. The master Shout has sourced is in excellent condition and sounds louder than ever. The concert numbers sound a little flat but they're boisterous with good directionality, although there isn't really any separation on the surrounds (and they're probably wasn't supposed to be). Where Shout excels is in the sound effects. There is a discreteness in the rear channels when a window breaks or the vrooms of the motorcycles and Studebakers are heard on the streets. Dialogue is generally discernible without any audible hiss or dropouts.

English SDH are available for the main feature.

Streets of Fire Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

None of Streets of Fire's DVD editions contained any bonus materials aside from the theatrical trailer (and production notes/filmographies on the early R1 disc.) Shout has ported over several different extras from the other BDs and added a brand new retrospective documentary (all on Disc Two):

• NEW HOTGUNS & SIX STRINGS: The Making of a Rock N Roll Fable – A Feature-Length Documentary Featuring Interviews with Director/Co-writer Walter Hill, Producer Lawrence Gordon, Actors Michael Paré, Deborah Van Valkenburgh, Richard Lawson, Elizabeth Daily, Lee Ving, Screenwriter Larry Gross, Editor Freeman Davies, Associate Producer Mae Woods, Art Director James Allen, Costume Designer Marilyn Vance, Assistant Director David Sosna, Choreographer Jeffrey Hornaday, Sound Editor Richard Anderson, Music Producer Kenny Vance and Many More... (1:40:23, 1080p) - a comprehensive doc with the listed participants that Shout produced exclusively for this release. Anecdotes and production stories are multitudinous from the filmmakers and cast members. In English, not subtitled.

• RUMBLE ON THE LOT: Walter Hill's Streets of Fire Revisited – A Feature-Length Documentary Featuring Interviews with Director/Co-writer Walter Hill, Actor Michael Paré, Amy Madigan and Art Director James Allen (1:22:29, 1080p) - this doc originally appeared on the Koch and Second Sight discs. In English, not subtitled.

• Vintage Featurettes: Rock and Roll Fable, Exaggerated Realism, Choreographing the Crowd, Creating the Costumes, From the Ground Up (10:43, upconverted to 1080) - a compilation of mini-featurettes extracted from Universal's EPK. In English, not subtitled.

• Music Videos (8:39, upconverted to 1080) - some music videos produced when the movie came out that are played in succession.

• Theatrical Trailer (2:25, upconverted to 1080) - an urestored anamorophic widescreen trailer that appears as if it's been run through the projector one too many times. In English, not subtitled.

• On Air Promos (13:13, upconverted to 1080) - more EPK stuff with interview snippets and the like. In English, not subtitled.

• Still Gallery (10:22, 1080p) - a voluminous collection of color and black-and-white stills from Universal's press kit, lobby cards from the European marketing campaigns, and reproductions of pictures and posters from the Japanese program/booklet. The slide show starts out with vertical photographs before seguing into wider snapshots.

Streets of Fire Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Shout Select has delivered a fantastic two-disc set for the cult classic Streets of Fire. While the transfer is imperfect, it moves ahead in some key areas over the other European BDs. Shout's authoring and encoding of the lossless audio tracks is flawless. Shout has also assembled virtually all the older and more recently produced supplements from the other discs. Plus, it has added a very in-depth retrospective doc with scores of interviews with the principals. Hopefully, Paramount (or another label that licenses it) will get around to doing a special edition of Hill's commercial hit, 48 Hrs. (1982). In addition, I would love to see a BD of another Hill/Ry Cooder collaboration: Crossroads (1986). For the time being, indulge in Shout's deluxe edition of Streets of Fire. VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.