Primarily made as a way for Walter Hill to combine, in his own words "
everything I thought was cool when I was a kid" into one film. Which means you get lots of rain, neon, 50's greaser gangs, cool cars, jokes in tough situations, leather jackets, guns, fire, explosions and hot 80's women ( Diane Lane
back then, come on!). He then managed to combine these with such cool things as
Lee Ving punching out Rick Moranis, Diane Lane doing a pretty good lip syncing job, Micheal Pare over doing his tough hero act while still kicking lots of ass in his high waisted slacks, more ass kicking from a grubby, pseudo lesbian mechanic,
William Dafoe in some PVC waders and a pretty sweet, pumping 80's sound track. With all these elements how could it possibly fail? Well it did, and turned out to be
Walter Hill's biggest commercial failure. Despite being the main inspiration for Capcom's greatest future arcade achievement,
Final Fight and being a true classic of cheesy 80's cinema. There really is no justice in the world.
The music was originally meant to involve Bruce Springsteen's song of the same title as the film, but on learning that it would be recorded with a different vocalist so Diane Lane could lip sync to it, he decided to pull out of the deal. Which left them with Ry Cooder, Jim Steinman,
The Blasters (awesome) and Face To Face ( who also played the backing band The Attackers and also recorded the best song on here "
Nowhere Fast") to fill out the soundtrack. Which they all do pretty well. its a solid effort from everyone. With the exception of "
Nowhere Fast" and "
Tonight Is What it Means To Be Young" most of the rest of this soundtrack has sunk into obscurity, which is a real shame as it contains some really good stuff. The doo wop tracks are good and both contributions by The Blasters are worth investigating.
Anyhow, here it is........................
