Rumble Fish / 75 (A-)

I counted, just like we used to do with Mike Jones songs.  I believe they said "Rusty James" 16 times in the first 4 minutes of the movie.  Pretty darn annoying and I wish they edited a bunch of them out.  With that aside...holy crap, awesome cast!  M. Dillon, N. Cage, Chris Penn, Hopper, Diane Lane, Fishburne, T. Waits, Rourke - man!  Why didn't anyone ever mention this movie to me before??  They all look so young.  The cast reminds me of something similar to that 'stay gold Ponyboy, stay gold' movie.  I had to stare at Nick Cage four times to verify if it was him, then I had to actually look him up on the internet just to be sure.  I also had to look up Diane Lane.  Thought she looked like Kate Hudson but knew that couldn't be the case since it's from 1983...then I thought maybe Ashley Judd.  There, now you know some of my thought processes mid-movie.

The 35 summers conversation was awesome.  Made me think about stuff. I might go and get this conversation tattooed on my back.  Here it is: 'Time is a funny thing. Time is a very peculiar item. You see when you're young, you're a kid, you got time, you got nothing but time. Throw away a couple of years, a couple of years there... it doesn't matter. You know. The older you get you say, "Jesus, how much I got? I got thirty-five summers left." Think about it. Thirty-five summers.' - Great lines, true dat.

Normally Matt Dillon annoys me and I don't love watching him act, yet I still respect him as he is not totally awful.  He's just someone I'd just rather not watch and he reminds me of my old neighbor.  But in this movie he was really good.  Rourke was awesome as well.  I gotta say it - watching a movie with a young version of Mickey Rourke is so weird.  So very weird.

My thoughts on the plot is that it was very well done.  There is a purpose to this artsy movie, to show a relationship not only between a brother and an older, cooler brother, but to show the relationship and hierarchy between a family of hooligans running their corner of the city.  A dreary feel, good acting, interesting color...hella movie.  Francis Ford Coppola does a good piece of work.  It's kind of beautiful in a way, in a very slow, very specific and on purpose kind of way.   Glad I saw it on it's last day available on instant stream.

I estimate they ended up saying "Rusty James" 47 more times as the movie went on yet I barely know the other characters names.  I think one was Smokey.  I looked this fact up on IMDB (c) and they said it was mentioned over 50 times, at least once every two minutes.  Should have been cut in half.