Product Description: In the lawless world of 1996, two motorcycle renegades rob a bank to save their favorite hangout, and find themselves in the middle of a multi-million dollar drug swindle. Genre: Feature Film-Action/Adventure Rating: R Release Date: 6-FEB-2001 Media Type: DVD
Amazon.com: Sheathing itself in bad taste, this film flaunts its tackiness, its machismo, and its very stupidity, which of course makes for a lot of dopey fun. Harley Davidson (Mickey Rourke) returns to his roots, the LA of 1996 (the film was set in the near future, as it was made in 1991). Burbank has become an airport, a new drug called Crystal Dream is all the rage, and Harley's favorite bar is being torn down. To save it, he and the Marlboro Man (Don Johnson, at his most engaging) concoct an armed robbery that goes awry. Instead of cash, they end up with a shipment of Crystal Dream. Hunted by a drug dealer's goons, the two bark, fight, drink, and squint at each other as they try to get themselves out of their mess. This is Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid for the monster-truck crowd, with plenty of breasts, choppers, broken pool cues, and empty bottles. It's impossible to blame this film for being so emphatically trashy; its creators would consider that a compliment, anyway. --Keith Simanton
BAD MOVIE HEAVEN!!! "High concept" movies -- that's Hollywoodspeak for two-sentence descriptions used by screenwriters to convey the entire idea of a proposed film to catch a studio executive's interest -- have been providing us with Bad Movies We Love for years now. "An all-star cast at an opening night party atop the world's tallest building. Fire breaks out below, the sprinkler system doesn't work yet, and only Steve McQueen and Paul Newman can save them."
Not every no-brainer sales pitch results in THE TOWERING INFERNO, however. High concept meets rock bottom with HARLEY DAVIDSON AND THE MARLBORO MAN, which surely was sold with something like, "Picture this: a remake of BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, set in the future, with motorcycles instead of horses, and we don't kill the heroes at the end. Here's the beauty part -- we've got two product placement tie-ins right in the title alone. Doncha love it?"
We sure do, but not for the reasons that the writers might have guessed.
The movie opens with Mickey Rourke flashing his bare buns, then lovingly revving up his Harley. Like your homoerotic associations more deliberate than that? You have only to read the names of cast members like "Big John Studd" and "Tom Sizemore" to start collapsing with mirth. When Roarke (dressed in leather lad regalia, replete with tattoo and earring) bumps into his ol' high school pal Don Johnson (dressed in cowpoke drag, including Stetson, boots, and whiskers), we suspect the pair must have attended Village People High. When Rourke ponders, "If there is a God, I'd like to meet the dude,"i'd like to hang out with him," it's hard not to cry out to the screen "Yo, Mick -- you're already in Bad Movie Heaven, and your'e God there."
Though HARLEY's all tricked out with costly high-speed chases, helicopter footage, and leaps off Vegas hotels, it never passes muster as a LETHEL WEAPON clone, and the two stars are the reason why. They're just B actors time-warped into the wrong period of movies: both belong in the mid-'60s, when America was the land of drive-in movies, and Roger Corman was churning out cheapo WILD ANGELS biker flicks. "It's better to be dead and cool than alive and uncool," the stars tell each other, oblivious to the fact that, as actors, they're already both dead and uncool.
At movies end, Rourke pulls over his Harley for a shapely starlet with her thumb out. "Where you heading?" he asks. She says, "Nowhere special." "C'mon," says Rourke, "I'll take you there."
Indeed.
Nowhere special is where Rourke always takes us, down that long lonesome highway, headed straight for Unintentional Laughter, U.S.A.
Look for Chelea Field, Vanessa Williams and Daniel Baldwin (who does a dead-pan take on brother Alec doing Steven Seagal).
butch abd sun dance rip off It is the total rip off of the Butch Cassidy and Sundance movie. They copies the format, the story line and all we got is a big 'HUH?'
A California Cartoon of a movie A western action movie in the near future of then... New drugs, old bikes and real tough guys meet Kevlar and radio tracking devices. As usually the bad guys take the big fall, but the high dive in Los Vegas is the real stunt in the movie where they go off the top of a high rise hotel into the deep end of a swimming pool. The names of the heroes kind of tells you it is sort of an action figure type movie, like speedracer or transformers...
A guilty pleasure Let's face it... this isn't a great flick. So why do I watch it all the time. I don't know. The opening sequence makes me want to jump on my bike and ride into the desert. Keep an eye out for the "outrageous" gas prices early in the film (keep in mind that this came out in 1991). You'll either laugh or cry.
Good Flick I'm not a big fan of Don Johnson, but teaming him with Mickey Rourke was a great idea. A great tale of good friends. Good movie for guys and girls.
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