Streets of Fire

Cinema International Corporation (CIC) | Release Date: June 1, 1984

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

59	METASCORE Mixed or average reviews based on 14 Critic Reviews

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Critic Reviews

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Jake Cole

Walter Hill’s 1984 film combines everything from seedy bars, street fights, motorcycles, beefy heavies, and tough dames in a smorgasbord of tawdry, moral-flouting clichés that distills decades of imagery that represents youth in cinema. Read full review

Staff (Not Credited)

The message is that there is no message; if this isn't action cinema in its purest form, then it's pretty close. Read full review

Adam Lowes

Streets of Fire is fairly devoid of anything resembling a cohesive plot or lacking even a shred of subtext. It exists purely as pop action cinema, sweeping you up with a fevered enthusiasm and an overpowering desire to entertain which proves incredibly difficult to resist. Read full review

Roger Ebert

Walter Hill's Streets of Fire begins by telling us it's a rock & roll fable ... from another time, another place. The movie is right on the rock & roll, but the alternative time and place are mysteriously convincing -- especially if, like me, you believe the most beautiful post-war American cars were Studebakers. Read full review

The GuardianPhilip French

Its subtitle, A Rock & Roll Fable, contains all the elements Hill looked for in a movie as a teenager in the late 50s, and in 94 minutes it manages to be an urban western, a backstage rock musical and a biker flick set in an unidentified, run-down rust-belt inner city that might be yesterday or tomorrow. Read full review

Staff (Not Credited)

A pulsing, throbbing orchestration careening around the rescue of a kidnapped young singer. The decor is urban squalor. Read full review

Jay Scott

Walter Hill is a master moviemaker, and when Streets of Fire is speeding by like Mercury on methedrine, the rush left in its wake cancels out questions of content. But the minute the momentum slows, it's another story - a story about a movie with no story at all. [01 June 1984]

Bill Cosford

What goes on in Streets of Fire is not quite stupid -- it's saved from that by the remarkable love for style of its director, Walter Hill -- but the film doesn't show an intelligence to match its style, either. [04 June 1984, p.C6]

EmpireKim Newman

Very of its time but enjoyable for all that. Read full review

Gary Arnold

The disappointing thing about Streets of Fire is that it can't deliver on the promise of a tangy, sexy evening of stimulation. The failure is aggravated by the exorbitant scale of the production, which seems much too lavish for an atmosphere of B-movie squalor. [01 June 1984, p.B4]

Rita Kempley

Excess of vision and a weak underpinning are the potholes in the Streets of Fire. If you can swerve around them, Happy trails to you. [01 June 1984, p.25]

David Ansen

On paper, this sounds like an ideal Walter Hill (The Warriors, 48 HRS.) movie. On screen, it is little more than a stylishly designed but feeble parody that quickly turns into self-parody. [11 June 1984, p.81]

Janet Maslin

For all its studied sultriness, the movie feels unsexy, perhaps because its inspiration is the kind of hard- hearted western that concentrates on manly combat while eschewing all sentiment. Read full review

TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)

Vallone's production design is a knockout--the film is weakly scripted and scored. Read full review