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Summary: 46 years later...
Review: I look at this film today through very different eyes than when I first saw it as a high-schooler in '54. Of course a lot of it seems hokey now, and with good reason: the world is a far less innocent place than it was in those bucolic, Eisenhower, pre-R&R days. But when it first came out, it was Hot Stuff. Bad guys, noisy bikes, beer-drinking, and girls in tight sweaters were a big deal to us then.
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Summary: Brando Or Not, This Is a Horrible Movie
Review: I rented this movie with my continuing effort of renting all of Brando's best films. Well, this is not one of them. Not only is it a bad Marlon Brando movie, it's a bad movie, period. The acting is anything but timeless, and at times it is embarassing to listen to the dialogue. There is practically no story. The acting is abysmal and the hour and 20 minute film lacks in every other aspect. Watch out for these bikers - they'll scat sing to you and mess up your hair!!!! Oh no!
Rating:
Summary: Good movie
Review: I thought this movie was pretty entertaining considering its age. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to stay awake through it but it's not one of those movies. It moves fast and its not long. I recommend to anyone going through a classic movie phase.
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Summary: Not a criminal or outlaw bone in their bodies!
Review: I'm a Brando fan. And so looked forward to seeing this classic 1954 film on videotape. What a disappointment! There was nothing intrinsically bad about this gang. And that was what the trouble was. They were just a bunch of young men who liked to let loose on weekends. Not a criminal or outlaw bone in their bodies. They made a lot of noise, fought among themselves, drank a lot of beer. The pranks were rather harmless too, like teasing the uptight residents of the town, making noise, joking around by putting hair dryers on their heads. A small amount of property gets destroyed, but these men are obvioiusly not real criminals. I giggled throughout the move in places that were overacted and were not supposed to be funny. There was no real tension even though a voice-over at the beginning warns the audience about this awful gang and that people have to make sure that it doesn't happen here. The love interest seemed silly. And Brando seemed to be totally limited in his range of emotion or acting ability. I just can't understand why this movie became so famous and was so acknowledged. It is not just that it was made more than three decades ago. I've seen other movies from that period that had good plots and good acting. On the Waterfront was one of them, produced in the same year,and in which Brando emerged as a fine actor. Recommended only for those into classic films. But be prepared to be bored.
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Summary: The film that helped give The Beatles their name..
Review: John Lennon wanted something like the Crickets (Buddy Holly's band), and saw this film and named his band after the motorcycle gang: The Beetles. He changed the spelling to Beat les and had the perfect name that reflected his beat band. Not a review of the film but they could have ben called "The Shoes."
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Summary: The classic Hollywood biker film
Review: Marlon Brando and Lee Marvin depict bikers as only Hollywood can in a film inspired by actual events that took place in a town called Hollister during the late '40s. The movie along with the rebel biker image was sparked by a Time magazine cover showing a drunken shirtless biker lounging on his Harley-Davidson with a beer in both hands. It was a bit of bad press, reading something like the "downfall of society" or "outlaw bikers take over town" that originated the rebel H-D image and gave Hollywood the inspiration to create this timeless cult classic.
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Summary: Rebels Looking For A Cause
Review: Marlon Brando stars as the leader of a biker gang that invades a small town and turns everything upside down. To be honest, these bikers don't seem particularly dangerous, and some of the dialogue is so rooted in the Fifties' slang I found myself laughing out loud. However, the Brando performance makes the movie worth a look, and he has an interesting relationship with the sheriff's daughter. I'm sure this film had a much bigger impact on its Fifties audience than it does nowadays. For me it was a step back into another time for seventy minutes.
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Summary: Not good, not bad....
Review: Not really that good, but not all that bad either. This describes both the quality of the movie and the degree of evil of the characters. Loosely based on a true incident. A large number of disfunctional World War II vets returned home, bought motorcycles, and decided to see America. A group (proto-gang) of these vets, um... liberated a small California town in 1947. Yes, they terrorized the townfolk, but didn't exactly burn the place down and murder people. They had their way. A few fistfights, a few unpaid-for drinks. (Possibly a woman assaulted here and there: don't mean to suggest it was entirely innocent, or that no one got hurt. Don't mean to suggest it was a big joke. War is evil and can scramble the brains of its participants.) Think of KELLY'S HEROES types returning home. A couple of hundred CHiPs finally moved in and unliberated the town. After this incident, many wannabe-disfunctional-vets admired the devil-may-care attitude and sought to emulate them. Thus was born the outlaw biker culture. This movie is based on that except it has been changed to disaffected youths as the prepetrators. It's basically the eternal internal struggle of living a life of freedom vs. one of being a responsible productive member of society. Note: I do not wish to be seen as attacking military veterans. One has only to see many of the movies made in the late 1940s to know that many men had a great deal of trouble coming home and readjusting to civilian life. Examples: THE BIG SLEEP, ALL MY SONS, THE BLUE DAHLIA, CROSSFIRE, KEY LARGO, THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIFE, etc. (If you consider the butcher shop and horse race as metaphors for war, then even NATIONAL VELVET has to be put in this category.)
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Summary: The Wild One: But Who is the One?
Review: Occasionally, a film comes along that is thoroughly unexceptional but somehow catches the emotional pulse of the viewer and of the age. For better or worse, this film defines the moment, which flares beacon-like, and in whose glare its flaws are momentarily hidden until the next generation can see it with fresh perspective. Such a film was THE WILD ONE. Based loosely on a real-life incident in 1947, California, director Laslo Benedek retells how a mob of Hell's Angels type motorcyclists descended on a small, sleepy town to wreak havoc. Coming as it did just two years after the end of the Second World War, this original incident stunned the contemporary American public that had grown used to the idea that violence committed against a recognized enemy was acceptable, but against solid, middle-class citizens, there arose a fury against those who would dare upset what the stormers of Tarawa had died to preserve. By 1953, there grew to age a new generation of which the memories of the war were but fleeting, and this new group was shouting to be heard in a wilderness of predictably, law-abiding Americans. Against this backdrop of youthful rootlessness, leather was the symbol of revolt and motorcycles the means to flaunt it.
Marlon Brando plays Johnny, the cycle leader, as a young punk who hides his fears and uncertainties behind a mask of crafted sarcasms. He speaks in the new lingo of the youth. One of the ironies not fully appreciated until years later is that the actors who played the gang riders made their later reputations often playing the same upstanding citizens whom they reviled that sunny day in California. It is clear that they are in revolt against conformity, but when Johnny's love interest, played by Mary Murphy asks him against what they are rebelling, he snarls in one of the two most memorable lines of the movie and the age: 'What do you got?' They derail a legitimate motorcycle competition, insult the good citizens of the town, and generally raise a low level of hell. Eventually the citizens get fed up with the antics of Johnny and form a vigilante committee that drives them out, but only after one of the townspeople is killed in the melee does Johnny and his band exit the town, bruised in body if not in mind.
Repeated viewings on the film bring out a subtle subtext about the need to make one's mark on a world that encourages a bland uniformity, and the vicious response of that world to enforce its unwritten fiats by extra-legal means. As the viewer sees the wrongs committed by the bikers against the townspeople and then balances them against other wrongs committed by the townspeople against the bikers, he is sullenly surprised to learn that the leather of the bikers covers a minor level of lawlessness while the button-down sport shirts of the town's citizens covers a viciousness that is truly lethal. When the bikers roll into town, they seem more like a rowdy group of soccer fans out to raise mild hell after their favorite team had lost a key game: they grouse, they curse, they drink beer, and they goose a few girls. The townspeople, on the other hand, seem individually impotent, and stay that way until Chino, played effectively by a loud and slimy Lee Marvin, pushes both the town to react to him and Johnny to reclaim his right to be the bike leader. It is only when the town's citizens band together that the audience can sense that they blend their small amounts of testosterone into a boiling cauldron, the results of which show more about themselves than about the bikers. They grab Johnny and drag him to a garage, where they beat him with fists and clubs. It is here that Johnny hurls at his tormentors the film's other great line, 'My old man hits harder than that.'
It is unlikely that director Benedek meant THE WILD ONE to stand as anything more than the first in what he surely hoped would be a renaissance of a new film genre, but as so often happens in any work of art, the finished product may evoke a response that the originating artist did not intend at all. Perhaps this is the reason why THE WILD ONE can still be enjoyed years after other cycle movies have long since crashed into the dust.
Rating:
Summary: I wish today's movies were a tenth as good
Review: One of Marlon's best films. Great action, some romance, a lot of drama, and all without cursing or graphic violence. How did they do that?
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