The most violent film from the TV series about the Rebellious Highway is perhaps the Motorcycle Gang (Motorcycle Gang, 1994). Actually, director John Milius is known for filming military dramas, a bias towards right-wing extremism and the propaganda of weapons. Bah, and there is our old friend, actor Gerald Lee McRaney, who is familiar to us at least from Deadwood. The film Motorcycle Gang can be attributed to the genres of road movie and neo-noir, their obvious elements are present in the plot.
Sal Morris is a decent family man, a former veteran of the Korean campaign, leads a measured life. He and his wife and teenage daughter move around a lot. Now he wants to move his family from Texas to California and finally settle there. Along the way, the beautiful girl is noticed by bad guys-bikers and the leader falls for her and decides that he will definitely possess her, because she has light and purity – qualities that he definitely lacks. These bikers are really fierce, 100% outlaws, living on the principle of live fast die young. It costs them nothing to send a person to the next world.
Sal Morris, calm and confident
The cast is all of a high level. Gerald McRaney has the role of a charismatic veteran, a real man. Elan Oberon plays his wife Jean, a woman deprived of attention and hungry for pleasure. Carla Gugino is here at the beginning of her acting career, she embodied the image of a young girl with already seductive female forms, and criminals want her so vampirically. And yet it’s good that she’s a daddy’s daughter and inherits her father’s character rather than her mother’s character.
Jake Busey as the leader of a Motorcycle Gang looks organic. The only thing I don’t understand is why he suddenly started hitting a girl who almost gave herself to him? He probably couldn’t make love to her.
His father’s star, Gary Busey, rose in the late 80s, and until the mid-90s he was the most popular action hero (Eye Of The Tiger, Chrome Soldiers, Point Break), but then something went wrong. The acting baton was taken by his son, and he made a good career in cinema.
The Bikeriders ride Harleys
There are similar films where an ordinary person speaks out against a gang of criminals. Driven to despair in a stressful situation, he intelligently turns on the “berserker” and sometimes he even manages to win. These are “Straw Dogs” by Sam Peckinpah with Dustin Hoffman, “Accident” with Kurt Russell, “Under the Cover of Night” with Jake Gyllenhaal. I also remembered the “Cape of Fear”, where the villain also liked the daughter of the main character.
The mistake of the bikers is that they underestimated the “dad”, decided that he was not a serious opponent. Sal is modest and quiet, but that doesn’t mean he’s weak.
Daddy's daughter
In general, bikers in the USA are a separate topic, from the reputation of hooligans and trouble-makers (let’s remember the Savage or Without Love), some went further and became the personification of crime. Although they are only 1% of the total number of bikers, but the noise and trouble from them is more than enough. I once started watching the TV series “Sons of Anarchy”, there are great actors and an authentic atmosphere. But the degree of violence increased with each season, and on the third I stopped watching it.
Happy family
Many of the bikers in the gangs were murderers, rapists, drug dealers. Local wars were waged between the gangs. I don’t know how things are there with them now. In our country, bikers tend to challenge not the establishment, but the road and the generally accepted way of transportation. These are decent tough guys, because in order to ride on two wheels over our potholes and ditches, you must at least have balls of steel. Their lawlessness may consist only in exceeding the set speed. And they don’t like criminals, the honor of “flowers” is more expensive.
“…Many of you see life in the sunlight. And I’m in blood red. Do not ask for mercy, it does not happen. Never give up. My dad taught me that a million years ago…”
Watch the movie Motorcycle Gang (1994) online:
