In this second of Francis Ford Coppola's back-to-back screen adaptations of novels by S. E. Hinton, the grand romanticism of The Outsiders was flipped to create an expressionist, monochrome vision of youthful passion and melancholy, and became one of Coppola's most personal and dazzling works. Against a run-down, industrial Tulsa, Oklahoma, Coppola presents a vivid portrait of troubled teenage gang leader Rusty James (Matt Dillon) as he struggles with cohorts, rival gangs, his frustrated girlfriend Patty (Diane Lane), his estranged father (Dennis Hopper), and the return of his idolised older brother The Motorcycle Boy (Mickey Rourke).