BIKER BOYZ

By: Abbie Bernstein
Review Date: Friday, January 31, 2003

Watching BIKER BOYZ, one has the feeling that it was essentially designed for those members of the audience of THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS who felt that the latter film had too many wheels and too much plot. BIKER has motorcycles instead of cars and a soap opera-esque family drama instead of the robbery/undercover cop storylines, but it shares with the other film adrenaline-fueled loud and dangerous racing and testosterone-charged confrontations.

In BIKER, the primary (and repeated) challenges are between Jalil (Derek Luke), better known on the street as "Kid," who has spent his life in the shadow of the street-racing bike scene but only taken up racing himself after the death of his father, and Smoke (Laurence Fishburne), the acknowledged "King of Cali," who is the most authoritative and respected and fastest biker club leader in the state. The racers wager money on the outcome of their races, but the main prize seems to be bragging rights.

The motorcycle action itself is flashy and impressive, with some fun stunts and cool innovations devised by director Reggie Rock Bythewood and his stunt team. Other considerations may be beside the point, but the film does detour off the track so often that we eventually have to pay attention to the non-action portions, where the movie has some serious problems.

BIKER BOYZ

cannot be faulted for following a sports movie formula that has been around forever clearly, the premise seems solid to more people than just screenwriters Craig Fernandez and Bythewood but for a lot of viewers, it's hard to see real drama in situations where grown men challenge each other with consequences that are mostly ephemeral. In films about professional sports, at least people's careers are on the line, but here even this isn't the case. From what little we see of the characters' lives away from the bikes, there is some intrigue in the notion of middle-class guys of all ages risking tangling with the law (all of that illegal obstruction of traffic in order to hold the races in public places), but the collision of social status and misdemeanor convictions never becomes a real story point.

All of the above might be more palatable if the human drama were handled with more finesse, but both dialogue and situations are dealt with in terms so straightforward as to be borderline comical. A revelatory bomb dropped by Jalil's mother (Vanessa Bell Calloway) in the mid-second act doesn't lead to histrionics, but the consequences don't seem to add up to much, either. The formation of a new biker club by Jalil and his pals, so that they can legitimately compete with the established racing groups, is a largely missed opportunity we see the band growing without any interesting complications or challenges.

Fishburne brings presence and assurance to a role that requires both, while Luke is a sincere and watchable young leading man. They bring welcome conviction to their work here, even when the scenes are standard melodrama.

BIKER BOYZ is dynamic and enjoyable when it's in motion, but the fun it provides when the engines aren't revving is unfortunately largely inadvertent.

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