Rumble Fish

A myth-infused coming-of-age story that's directed with a grandly imaginative visual repertoire to match.

If Rumble Fish fails as a traditional movie about real people, it is beguiling as an exercise in hallucinatory style.

Overwrought and overthought.

A bit too over-stylized to allow for any great involvement, the most interesting part of this is spotting the young actors before they became stars -- most notably nephew-of-the-director Nicolas Cage.

Coppola's recent viewing seems to have been German silent films of the '20s, so he has decided to coat the whole enterprise in a startling Expressionist style, which is very arresting but hardly appropriate to the matter in hand.

This is a movie you are likely to hate, unless you can love it for its crazy, feverish charm.

The drama is extremely mannered and the symbolism a mite overdone, but it's a visually startling knockout, brilliantly filmed in moody black and white with some dashes of colour.

It’s a movie that is both mythical and intimate, grounded and stylized, external and interior. Every piece of Rumble Fish is consumed by the emotions of the characters, by the tragedy of their lives and the time that is passing.

The coolest movie Coppola ever made.

…a bold experiment, one which evokes a thoughtful, lyrical, adult attitude rarely seen in cinema…