Eddie and the Cruisers

A television reporter goes after an old band. Eddie and the Cruisers played in New Jersey in the sixties; they made an album and it caught on. The second album was recorded and the label did not like it. Then Eddie Wilson drove off a bridge one night. No body was found. Now those lost tapes are being hunted and someone may have them. The reporter finds the members one by one. Frank, who played keyboards, is a teacher now. The narrative goes back and shows how the two albums were made. Martin Davidson directs. Tom Berenger plays Frank and Michael Paré plays Eddie; Joe Pantoliano and Ellen Barkin are in the cast. It is an American production, made in 1983. The source is P. F. Kluge's novel. The songs were made by John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band, who are the Cruisers' sound in the film. The film did not work in cinemas; it spread later on cable and video rental, and the album sold heavily in that period. The matter it treats is the lost recording; the film is less about solving a mystery than about telling the band's own story. The narrative moves constantly between the past and the present. The character Michael Paré plays is almost never explained, and that is deliberate. The ending is left uncertain and a sequel was made years later. Its limit is structure; the mystery is weak, the characters thin, and the ending closed. Who it is for: viewers who like music films and eighties American production. Who it is not for: it is conventional, the mystery weak, and the ending unresolved.