Rumble Fish (1983)

Rumble Fish is a 1983 American teen drama noir film directed by Francis Ford Coppola. It is based on the 1975 novel Rumble Fish by S. E. Hinton, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Coppola. The film stars Matt Dillon, Mickey Rourke, Vincent Spano, Diane Lane, Diana Scarwid, Nicolas Cage, Laurence Fishburne, Chris Penn, and Dennis Hopper.

The film centers on the relationship between a character called the Motorcycle Boy (Rourke), a revered former gang leader wishing to live a more peaceful life, and his younger brother, Rusty James (Dillon), a teenaged hoodlum who aspires to become as feared as his brother.

Coppola wrote the screenplay for the film with Hinton on his days off from shooting The Outsiders. He made the films back-to-back, retaining much of the same cast and crew, particularly Matt Dillon and Diane Lane. Rumble Fish is dedicated to Coppola's brother August.

The film received positive reviews from critics, but was a box-office disaster, with its widest release earning a total of $2.5 million against an estimated budget of $10 million. It is notable for its avant-garde style with a film noir feel, shot on stark high-contrast black-and-white film, using the spherical cinematographic process with allusions to French New Wave cinema and German Expressionism. Rumble Fish features an experimental score by Stewart Copeland, drummer of the musical group The Police, who used a Musync, a new device at the time. The film has now become a cult classic over time.