Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man

Image

Mickey Rourke and Don Johnson squeeze the most out of their charismatic power as the titular outlaws, embodying American rebelliousness as they ride around on their motorbike and hog while engaging in a class struggle with corrupt capitalist villains.

The film admirably displays its middle finger to political correctness, as our anti-heroes light cigarettes in every scene and unleash a volatile cocktail of combat skills, crude jokes and undeniable camaraderie during their outlandish quest. Vanity directs the visual mayhem with gusto.

Image

Despite the paucity of plot, nostalgia critic Roger Ebert rightly praised its ‘goofy exuberance’, which remains in abundance as our rebels bust shit at the drop of a hat alongside Chelsea Field's feisty femme fatale in a film that knows full well it's a trashy cult product.

I can't help but unabashedly love this 90s bomb for its poor entertainment value and for evoking simpler action ideals. Great bad movies make for the best good times.

[Image](https://www.filmaffinity.com/ve/filmimages.php?movie_id=235913)

Upon release, the $20 million action film grossed a respectable $21.4 million at the box office. Proving that a sizeable audience was hungry for silly fun during the dark ‘blockbuster era’ of cinema.

(source: tmdb.org)

Macho ethos of 1980s Hollywood cinema began to die out in the next decade. One event in that process was the failure of Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man, 1991 film directed by Simon Wincer.

The plot is set in (then future) 1996 and begins when biker Harley Davidson (played Mickey Rourke) returns after two years of absence to Burbank, California and reunites with his friend, cowboy and rodeo rider Robert Lee “Marlboro Man” Edison (played by Don Johnson). Two of them hang out in a bar owned by their friend and mentor “The Old Man” Jiles (played by Julius Harris). He informs them that the bar is in financial dire straits and that the large bank wants to foreclose it on order to build skyscraper. The only way to prevent foreclosure is to pay 2.5 million US$. Harley gets an idea to find money by robbing one of bank’s armoured vans. He is joined by Marlboro Man and couple more friends but robbery doesn’t go according to plan; they barely escape with the loot when confronted by small army of heavily armed and seemingly invulnerable thugs led by Alexander (played by Daniel Baldwin). Another unpleasant surprise happens when Harley and friends realise that the van didn’t carry money but “Crystal Dream”, new, powerful, addictive and extremely lethal drug. They get in touch with bank’s corrupt manager Chance Wilder (played by Tom Sizemore) and offer to bring back drugs in exchange for money.

Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man was widely expected to become a big hit. The reasons for that were in two stars who had become extremely popular in 1980s thanks to their work on film (Rourke) and television (Johnson), script built on “buddy buddy” formula, plenty of action, some humour and few scenes featuring female nudity. Direction was given to Simon Wincer, Australian film maker who had previously made successful westerns and war epics. Script by Don Michael Paul was inspired by popular western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and deliberately chose for protagonists pair composed of a biker and cowboy – icons of traditional American manliness and rugged individualism who are at odds with modern world and faceless corporate villainy. Paul, however, went a little bit too far in his attempts to make the film “cool” and “clever”. Many characters are named after popular brands, although some of them are virtually unknown outside USA and the joke is thus lost for international audiences. Another bad idea was to set the plot few years in the future; the world didn’t look that much different from 1991, apart from few hardly noticeable details or American bank manager being forced to speak Japanese to his corporate overlords. The most striking detail is, however, the look of corporate thugs who are dressed in trench coats that make them almost identical to character of Neo in The Matrix.

Those interesting details, however, appear in script which was filled with cliches, undeveloped characters and occasionally bad dialogue. Poor pacing and some unnecessary subplots, like Marlboro’s romance with policewoman (played by Chelsea Field), make this film unnecessary overlong. Use of airport graveyard in couple of scenes make this film look cheaper than it actually is and uninspired music score by Basil Poledouris doesn’t help either. On the other hand, cast is mostly good (with exception of robot-like Daniel Baldwin). Mickey Rourke and Don Johnson have good “buddy buddy” chemistry, although Johnson appears to take his acting job a little bit more seriously. Although entertaining at some moments, Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man is mostly disappointing and can be recommended only to the more devout fans of its two main stars. It represented massive failure at the box office, convincing Hollywood studios executives that action films in 1990s should be kinder, gentler and more “politically correct”.

RATING: 4/10 (+)

Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ Leofinance blog https://leofinance.io/@drax.leo Cent profile https://beta.cent.co/@drax Minds profile https://www.minds.com/drax_rp_nc Uptrennd profile https://www.uptrennd.com/user/MTYzNA

Unstoppable Domains: https://unstoppabledomains.com/?ref=3fc23fc42c1b417 Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Bitcoin Lightning HIVE donations: https://v4v.app/v1/lnurlp/qrcode/drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7

Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man

Reviews

Comments

1 more review