Francis Ford Coppola hasn't been the same since the making of "Apocalypse Now."

Sure, the director of classics such as "The Godfather" trilogy and "The Conversation" has made other films since the 1979 war epic, but he's lost his stature as one of America's premiere filmmakers. Perhaps the many problems associated with the long production of "Apocalypse" — a flirtation with bankruptcy, a typhoon that wiped out the film's sets, the heart attack of leading-man Martin Sheen — took too much of a toll on the Oscar-winning director. Coppola himself has said that the man who made "The Godfather" died in the jungles of the Philippines while making the war film.

Since that production, one failed or overblown effort has followed another for Coppola. Nowadays, he's reduced to being a gun for hire, directing such uninspired studio fare as "Jack" and "The Rainmaker."

However, one of Coppola's post-"Apocalypse" films, 1983's "Rumble Fish," has been undeservedly overlooked. Featuring a strong ensemble cast of young actors, many of whom went on to become stars, it's an original and intelligent film about gangs and two brothers dealing with their memories of the past and a future rushing towards them.

One of two adaptations of novels by juvenile writer S.E. Hinton directed by Coppola, the other being 1983's "The Outsiders" (the director actually shot the two films back to back), "Rumble Fish" stars Matt Dillon and Mickey Rourke as the story's two brothers. Dillon plays Rusty James, who longs for the old days when gangs were kings, when rumbles were fought on battlefields full of glory. Rourke plays his older brother Motorcycle Boy, a street hero who used to lead the gangs but now wonders where he was leading them to. He is the Pied Piper without a purpose.

The brothers roam a world that is both fantastic and fatally realistic. Shot in black and white, the film depicts a nowhere-place where steam swirls over the street as if the town is asleep in a dream and where violence erupts in back alleys and under bridges. It's a world where poetry meets blood and broken glass,

It's also a film obsessed with time. Numerous shots are full of clocks; ticking timepieces hum in the background for much of the movie. The soundtrack, composed by The Police drummer Stewart Copeland, pulses with cymbals and drums that count off the seconds. Coppola films passing clouds and creeping shadows to show the passing of days and how the youth of the characters is slowly but steadily passing away.

"Time is a funny thing," mumbles singer Tom Waits, playing the bartender at the pool parlor where many characters fumble away their days picking fights and shooting endless games of stick.

Besides Waits, the film features a strong supporting cast including Nicholas Cage, Laurence Fishburne (who is so young he is referred to as "Larry" in the closing credits), Diane Lane and Dennis Hopper, who surprisingly turns down the volume on his crazy and manic nature and gives a sweet, understated performance as the brothers' alcoholic father.

With such solid actors and its depiction of a brutal yet surreal world, "Rumble Fish" is a movie that, while certainly not up to Coppola masterworks like parts 1 and 2 of "The Godfather," deserves a second look.

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