Film Forum

U.S., 1983/2005
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Based on S. E. Hinton’s classic novel
Starring C. Thomas Howell, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Diane Lane, Tom Cruise, Emilio Estevez
Approx. 114 min.

“Like the Corleones, like Kurtz in APOCALYPSE NOW, and like Hank and Frannie in ONE FROM THE HEART, the kids in THE OUTSIDERS (adapted from S.E. Hinton’s novel) are looking for a better world. The street life of teenage Tulsa is divided into the ‘socs’ (pronounced soches) who go to college and wear Brut, and the greasers from the other side of the tracks, who don’t. When a soc is knifed, three greasers go on the run to a rural idyll, turn tragic heroes, and finally return to try to cement a tenuous truce: like so much teenage Americana, it’s about the rites of passage from adolescence to adulthood.” – Time Out

Presented with support from The Ada Katz Fund for Literature in Film

Reviews

“With this new treatment, may rival BLADE RUNNER as the film most improved by a director’s cut. More than 20 minutes of lost footage are restored, and all of it deepens the story of teenage greasers trying to survive in the 1950s. In a commentary track, Coppola says he wanted the film to be ‘a young person’s,’ and the epic elegance of the new version shows he got awfully close.”
 – Mark Blankenship, Variety

“[Coppola’s] revisions to the film, which include a new, improved soundtrack, invest it with grandeur worthy of both its characters and his own ambitions.”
 – Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

“Francis Coppola’s revision of his 1983 film of S.E. Hinton’s best seller is funny, touching, and revelatory.”
 – Peter Travers, Rolling Stone