Rent The Outsiders (1983)

All Cast, Less Clout - The Outsiders review by griggs

Watching The Outsiders reminded me straight away of The Wanderers, though the two come at the early ’60s from very different angles. Coppola leans into myth, framing teenage turf wars with a soft-focus glow, while Philip Kaufman’s film a few years earlier had a bawdier, rougher energy that felt lived-in.

The Complete Novel cut of The Outsiders makes the needle drops the driving force, swelling and sentimental, almost like a jukebox musical. The Wanderers also trades heavily on its soundtrack, but there the songs feel closer to the Bronx streets they echo from, rowdier and more immediate. Coppola’s version plays like a fable softened by nostalgia, Kaufman’s like an awkward, funny, sometimes brutal memory.

The real highlight of The Outsiders is the cast, all future stars caught just before they broke through. It’s fascinating seeing that much talent bottled in one film. Yet compared to The Wanderers, which gives its gang more bite and grit, Coppola’s boys feel more like icons in the making than characters in the mess.

Spot-the-star-of-the-future early 1960s-set Teen Drama based on a classic novel - The Outsiders review by PV

This is a movie like DINER (set 1959) or I suppose AMERICAN GRAFFITI (set 1962), following teen boys through their coming of age with gang rivalry in smalltown America and the predictable tragedy (well something needs to happen in a story!). Apparently the novel is set in 1965 though it is never stated explicitly BUT from the music, this is pre-Beatles, 1961/2-ish I think.

And the music is GREAT I must say - Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis, Blue Moon. Superb stuff and deeply authentic.

The main actor is brilliant, C Thomas Howell, who debuted in ET and was cast here age 15 (he is now 57 and looks it. He stars in new film REAGAN and was also in the now-triggering SOUL MAN - yes, in blackface. Maybe that caused his career to nosedive? Odd really as the opposite worked wonders for Spike Less and the WHITE CHICKS film makers; Amazingly the actor playing his quiet Hispanic friend Johnny was 21 when this was filmed (he looks 13/14 at most!).

Patrick Swayze is here for the girls who love him (no dancing though). Matt Dillon, Rob Lowe. And Tom Cruise is one of the boys too in a small pre-stardom role.

And apparently director's daughter Sofia aged 11; the awful feem toon is written by a Coppola too and Stevie Wonder is roped in to sing the drivel. WHY NOT just use a great early 60s song? AH nepotism. An Italian word...

So-so, not brilliant, a real melodrama soap really. BUT the young actor boys are great as is the soundtrack AND unlike so many films now, it is NOT TOO LONG.

4 stars