‘Biker Boyz’

Wheel-popping, freeway-surfing bikers take to the silver screen in a film that’s more style than substance.   [PG-13]

By: Bob Brown
   Writer-director Reggie Rock Bythewood is a Renaissance man in the entertainment world. He cut his teeth writing for the TV series A Different World, was script writer on Spike Lee’s Get on the Bus, a cinematographer on the documentary Love & Basketball, and wrote and directed Dancing in September.
   Here he pulls out all the stops in a stop-less action film as director and co-script-writer with Craig Fernandez. If Reggie Rock has learned one thing, it’s how to move right along. Don’t let subplot details or psychological complexities bog you down. Just get the characters on stage, put them on hot bikes and get out of the way.

"Derek Derek Luke, left, is a young motorcycle racer out to make a name for himself in Biker Boyz, which features constant action and snazzy leather apparel, below.
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   From its title you might think this film is just for biker enthusiasts, and you would be partly right. But it’s also an interesting window on a private culture in certain parts of Los Angeles: African-American motorcycle clubs. The script grew from a piece by free-lance journalist Michael Gougis in the late Los Angeles New Times. Given privileged access to this closed society, Gougis was guided through its underworld by biker-leader Manuel Galloway.
   As portrayed in the film, biker members come from all walks of life, but they live for the bikes and the street meets. Although they’re generally a law-indifferent group, they keep their own strict codes of membership rules and ethics — forming a sort of tribal Bikers’ United Nations. At the top of the heap are the best riders, bikes and mechanics.
   Hanging his picture on the gossamer thread of a narrative, Reggie Rock is more interested in the sights, sounds and daring-do of this world than in character depth. And perhaps that’s best, given what’s most interesting here. The plot consists of what he likes to call "a contemporary Western." The King of Cali bikers is "Smoke" (Laurence Fishburne) who, with his entourage of Black Knights, rules the streets. But they’re about to be challenged by the upstart Kid (Derek Luke of Antwone Fisher), whose father (Smoke’s mechanic) is killed in one of Smoke’s street-race mishaps. The Kid starts out hustling money in rigged races. He turns legit after gathering a quartet of young bikers who share his lust to dethrone the king and somehow avenge his father’s death.
   The Kid and his riders call themselves, you guessed it, The Biker Boyz. Where they got all the money for the snazzy yellow-and-black-leather apparel, not to mention the super-hot Japanese bikes, is hard to explain, but never mind. It just happens that soon there is a critical mass of Biker Boyz, a rainbow coalition with an attitude, popping wheelies and trick riding through the maze of L.A. freeways. (Here’s a tip: if you want to surf on asphalt beside your bike, be sure to wear heavy steel-soled boots — at 100 mph they kick up a mean river of sparks. Also, your feet won’t get burned.)
   Of course, not all is smooth sailing. The Kid’s mom, Anita (the fine actress Vanessa Bell Calloway), doesn’t want her son falling into the world that killed her husband. And Smoke, with whom she has a history, wants the Kid out of his face until he’s had some more notches on his belt. What’s more, the Kid is awakening to the opposite sex. He’s set on impressing gorgeous biker tattooist Tina (Megan Good of the TV series Raising Dad). Sure, why not grab the cutest girl and tell everyone to get off your case? The baddest dude with the baddest machine can call the shots.
   You don’t need a compass to figure out what happens. The hero genre has fueled Westerns and quest films alike (think Star Wars), so you can just go with the flow. Take this film too seriously and you’ll be disappointed. It’s more style than substance, although there are some very fine actors involved. It’s refreshing to see Laurence Fishburne. Derek Luke, in his second feature appearance, makes more of his character than the script demands.
   Greg Gardiner (Men in Black II), with an action-film crew, photographs at a grainy, fast-cut pace as if this were a documentary. But despite the tough attitudes, the gang life depicted seems a little too Hollywood-sanitized for reality. Compare the photos of real gangs that grace the screen as the credits roll. Reggie Rock’s bikes are clean and pretty, in standard and exotic shapes and sizes, but L.A. biker gangs, not bike companies, receive a nod at the end.
   Like last summer’s Blue Crush, which plumbed the culture of women surfers, Biker Boyz is a sort of sports musical. Its plot only intermittently surfaces above the real business at hand — the Southern California atmosphere of rap and rock, Hondas and honeys, the peril and apparel of stunt-riding, street-racing, trash-talking, leather-fashionista bikers. What matters most are the sights, the sounds, the music, the machines, and the bodies that inhabit their isolated Brigadoon of bikes. No doubt.
Rated PG-13. Contains violence, sexuality and profanity.