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Who knew that California is a hotbed of black motorcycle
club activity, and that you could build an entire movie around
it? It doesn’t take much moviegoing experience to see that
this particularly story is a western, only mechanized. The
Biker Boyz are young turks, newly authorized by the biker
council to form their own club. Their leader, Kid (Luke),
has always chafed at his father’s (La Salle) seeming
deference to Smoke Galloway (Fishburne), who’s known
as The King of Cali because he’s the best gunslinger… uh,
biker, around. After his father dies in a freak accident,
Kid makes it his business to be constantly in Smoke’s face,
challenging him for the title. Eventually there’s going to
be a showdown, only instead of facing each other across an
emptied dusty street, they’ll be side by side, gunning their
engines toward a finish line. You can almost hear that music
from The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly. Who’s going to
win? The heavy-jawed Fishburne, who after all has western
experience (as Cowboy Curtis on “PeeWee’s Playhouse”) or The
Kid?
Biker Boyz includes a sort of class reunion for “A
Different World,” the “Cosby Show” spin-off that starred Bonet
and Hardison, and for which Jones, Prince-Bythewood,
and Bythewood were writers. It’s too bad that this
all-star lineup of black actors couldn’t have been in service
of a better project. Still, at least they’re getting work,
though it’s hard to believe Eriq La Salle quit “E.R.” for
five minutes of screen time in this triumph of style over
substance. It must be an official item in Lawrence Fishburne’s
post-Matrix contracts that there must be several slo-mo
shots of him walking in a long, flowing black leather coat.
He was hardly alone: The movie was very easy on the eyes,
being full of beautiful black people wearing lots of black
leather.
The movie, basically an excuse for a motorcycle music video,
is full of real “guy stuff.” There’s lots of trash talking,
a couple of genuinely amusing moments, and lots of really
stupid-looking ornamented bikes and biker clothes that left
me wondering how the riders afford it all. Only two characters—Orlando
Jones’s Soul Train and Meagan Good’s Tina (Kid’s love
interest) are shown to have actual jobs. Some of the actors
here transcend the almost aggressively non-thespian nature
of the material. As Anita, Kid’s mom, Vanessa Bell Calloway
is very very good. And Orlando Jones just gets more interesting
and enjoyable with every role. But Luke (Antwone Fisher)
gets stuck playing yet another character who’s young, dumb,
and full of cum, which can’t be an acting stretch when you’re
barely out of your teens. And Fishburne’s sunglasses did a
lot of the acting for him in this outing.
The subject matter, adapted from a New Times article
by Michael Gougis, is actually interesting enough to
merit a movie. Too bad that movie wasn’t a documentary. Then
we could have escaped the risible melodrama tacked onto this
film for no discernible reason. Biker Boyz does have
a good soundtrack and nice pictures of real bike club members
run during the closing credits. If you’re determined to see
it, you probably should see it on the big screen, but I just
can’t bring myself to give this three stars.
—Roxanne Bogucka
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out of 5
While we would never encourage anyone to destroy a video... 
