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With: C. Thomas Howell, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Diane Lane, Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise, Leif Garrett, Glenn Withrow, Darren Dalton, Michelle Meyrink, Gailard Sartain, Tom Waits, William Smith, Sofia Coppola, S.E. Hinton
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Written by: Kathleen Knutsen Rowell, based on a novel by S.E. Hinton
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Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola
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MPAA Rating: PG
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Running Time: 115
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Date: 03/25/1983
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Dogged and Pony Show
By Jeffrey M. Anderson
Francis Ford Coppola's follow-up to his financially troubled (but vastly underrated) One from the Heart, The Outsiders is perhaps best known for its crystal-ball casting, packing the house with future stars like C. Thomas Howell, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Matt Dillon, Tom Cruise (with ugly fake teeth), Patrick Swayze, Ralph Macchio, and Diane Lane. But it's also a warmly poignant story, with a cult of tried-and-true fans everywhere.
Our heroes are members of the "Greasers," forever tangling with the wealthy "Socs" (pronounced "soshes"). It begins in 1965, Tulsa, at a drive-in, where Dallas (Dillon) flirts with pretty "Soc" Cherry (Lane). Later, Ponyboy (Howell) and Johnny (Macchio) walk home together only to find that Johnny's parents are fighting again. So they hang out in a field and fall asleep.
When they wake up, Ponyboy races home to find his angry older brothers Darrel (Swayze) and Sodapop (Lowe) waiting for him. (Darrel looks after his siblings after the deaths of their parents, and is as worried as any parent might be.) They fight and Ponyboy runs out of the house. He and Johnny are jumped by Socs at a park, and a Soc is accidentally killed. Dallas arranges for them to hide out in an abandoned church, where the heart of the film takes place. They talk, bleach their hair, read Gone with the Wind, eat bologna, and feel the rhythms of life.
Coppola's direction is surprisingly straightforward here, with little of the flourish that defined One from the Heart and Rumble Fish (which was also based on a novel by S.E. Hinton and released six months later). Indeed, it actually seems rather soft, lacking the edge and complexity of something like The Wanderers. But it's also deeply affecting and hard not to love.
Hinton — who signed her novels "S.E." in order to disguise the fact that she was a woman writing boys' stories — appears as a nurse. The 91-minute theatrical cut was fairly successful, but it's Coppola's 115-minute director's cut ("The Complete Novel"), released in 2005, that really shines. In 2016, rapper Danny Boy O'Connor, of House of Pain, bought Darrel, Sodapop, and Ponyboy's house, and in 2019, opened it as a museum dedicated to the movie.
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