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Rooftops

5.2

23

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Original title

Rooftops

Year

1989

Running time

98 min.

Country

United States

Director

Robert Wise

Screenwriter

Terence Brennan. Story: Allan A. Goldstein, Tony Mark

Cast

Music

Michael Kamen, David A. Stewart

Cinematography

Theo Van de Sande

Producer

Koch Company, Mark/Jett Productions, New Visions Pictures

Genre

Drama | Teen/coming-of-age. Dancing

Synopsis

Set in the Manhattan street milieu that served him well in West Side Story, Robert Wise's Rooftops tells the story of T, a quiet, soft-spoken teen-ager who has left his broken home and is living in a makeshift shelter in an old water tower on top of an abandoned tenement building. There are other kids like him, including Squeak, a talented graffiti artist who joins T after an altercation involving his mother's boy friend. T and Squeak manage to scrape together what little money they need through minor sins (stripping cars, etc.), and at night all these street inhabitants get together in a vacant lot to "combat" dance, in which they use a combination of karate and dancing to force an opponent off of a platform. Into this mix comes Lobo, a drug dealer who moves into T's building and turns it into a crack house. Lobo's beautiful cousin Elana serves as his lookout – not because she wants to, but because her father's heart attack has left her family in dire financial straits. T and Elana become interested in each other, but T and Lobo are at odds with each other.

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User history

Rooftops

1989

Robert Wise

5.2

(23)