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Easy Rider

Easy Rider

List Price: $14.94
Your Price: $11.21
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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Perfection
Review: Yes, the editing is flawed or whatever, but it does not detract form this masterpiece. I compare this movie with "Do The Right THing". It takes you into the life of some characters you don't know, makes you see it their way and kills them off for no reason other than prejudice. Some say it's slow. Well slow down with it. As for Jack, I think his character is the worst. That bad accent stunk compared to the believable characters of Fonda and Hopper. Forget your politics in this. Forget what you think of drugs. This is about bigotry and hatred. "Normal people see freedom and it makes them scared." "It don't make them runnin' scared." It speaks to any generations disaffected youth. If it's 60's longhair or an 80's punk or a 90's goth.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Easy Rider is easy to forget
Review: This is considered the classic 60's counterculture film. Released in 1969, the American Film Institute (AFI) ranks it the 88th best film ever made, Time Magazine called it "...one of the ten most important pictures of the decade," and the LA Times said it remains "...an astonishing work of art and an overpowering motion picture experience." It is the movie that rocketed Jack Nicholson to stardom. All that said, it has not aged well!

The plot is; Let's buy drugs, then sell the drugs and use the money to go to Mardi Gras on our motorcycles. Along the way, we'll stop at a hippy commune, we'll have small-town girls sitting in a soda parlor think we're cute and we'll have sex with prostitutes in a New Orleans house of ill repute. All individuals in 'straight society' (in that term's original sense) are portrayed as cretins.

No storyline, no character development, no nuance, no maturation or lessons learned by the characters. No tension, either based on time running out or options running out. Only obvious metaphors, the editing doesn't come close to meeting the standards of the time, there's no backstory, no flashbacks, no richness, no depth, NO WAY.

I am writing this review because I was gullible enough to BUY this movie on DVD, based on the AFI ranking and my eagerness to accept it as the de facto standard drug culture movie of the sixties. I erred. There are only two redeeming elements in this film. One is great Rock music from, among others, Jimi Hendrixx and the Byrds. The other is Jack Nicholson, who has the role of a factoid spouting young, alcoholic lawyer. In effect, he is playing himself and he does so magnificently. But, in spite of this performance, the rest of variables that constitute a good movie or a good story are either missing or misused. Miss it!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: If you didn't love the movie, you just don't get it.
Review: One awesome flick about two guys doin their thing. Along the way society, the "supposed" normal and "respectable" people, hassles and lashes out at them -- trying to stomp out their dreams. In the end, society takes them out in a terrible display of pure idiot prejudice. I believe their spirits continued on -- society can never stomp out the spirit of Capt. America and Billy!

Two Thumbs Up for Fonda and Hopper -- I'm proud to own a copy and be part of the modern motorcycle generation.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Nothing more than a period piece
Review: "Easy Rider" is one of those movies that took me forever to see and when I finally did I was dissapointed somewhat. True, it launched the careers of Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Jack Nicholson. It featured some of the best rock music of the time in the soundtrack. The cinematography is wonderful as well. So what's the problem? Well for one thing the characters are not developed well at all. By the film's end I knew little more about them than I did when I started. It was also fairly boring too. It did not move fast at all. But it is worth a watch if you want to see some great actors before they hit their prime. And who can argue with the famous credit sequence when Fonda and Hopper are riding their bikes listening to "Born To Be Wild"? It's good for a viewing or two. But don't expect anything magnificent.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great Movie!
Review: I loved everything about this movie. The sequal is being made by Miracle Entertainment (mvee). Look for it next year.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Whatta a cool movie !
Review: I have seen this movie several times & I still think its one of the best movies ever made. Think of the freedom these two felt riding those awesome bikes cross-country. It states almost exactly what the youth of that period was trying to relate to society. That true freedom starts with accepting yourself & other people for who you or they are. This is one of them must-watch movies. Both Peter Fonda & Dennis Hopper did a great job in this movie. I recommend this movie alot.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Breakthrough Independent Film
Review: When "Easy Rider" was released in 1969, it marked a turning point in the history of the American cinema. It took the independent film movement--practiced for so long by Roger Corman and others--and thrust it forward into the spotlight and, eventually, the mainstream. Made for under a million dollars, "Easy Rider" eventually grossed close to fifty, and opened Hollywood's eyes to a whole new area of potential profits. The American film was never to be the same again.

The story is a simple one: two hippies (Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper) riding their motorcycles cross-country to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Along the way they visit a commune, meet some girls, go to a whorehouse, and do lots and lots of drugs. They also get thrown in jail where they meet an alcoholic lawyer, terrifically played by Jack Nicholson in his breakthrough role. The trio then continues on together towards New Orleans, stopping occasionally to smoke some grass and philosophize about life. Eventually, they have a series of strange and violent conflicts with some rednecks that lead to the movie's rather abrupt conclusion.

The best aspects of the film are the on-target performances and Laszlo Kovacs' stark cinematography. Also of note is a stunning, hallucinatory montage of an acid trip, complete with a bizarre Catholic motif. The writing (by Fonda, Hopper, and Terry Southern) is strictly ordinary, providing only the barest structure to hang the story on, punctuated by mostly improvised dialog.

What made "Easy Rider" different from the ordinary Hollywood films of its time was its rebellious spirit and youthful exuberance, complemented by its loud hippie rock soundtrack. Directed by Hopper and produced by Fonda, "Easy Rider" was the first movie of its kind to reach such a wide audience and gain mainstream acceptance. Its casual portrayal of drug use and confrontational defiance of authority combined to make "Easy Rider" an anthem for young people. Although the film today seems inevitably dated, it still stands as an enduring emblem of its age.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Overrated film...
Review: To the point: EASY RIDER is not, in my estimate,even close to being a great film. At best,it was--certainly now is--kind of self-indulgent novelty; hardly a directing archetype. Peter Fonda gets to look cool on a chopper (ersatz Roger McGuinn...a genuinely hip dude from whom the film squealed half its sound track). But stuff he says is unusually inane.(Granted: Mr. Fonda became a good actor).Jack Nicholson's role as VISTA-type, poverty lawyer is appealing and effective. He's the only character who struck me as being good-naturedly intelligent. The role brought him attention he deserved. As another viewer observed, overall these are unlikeable dudesters. They are DOPE PUSHERS( the trite tune by Steppenwolf proclaims). The stuff stashed in their motorcycle gas tanks isn't harmless grass or hash. Today's Yuppies who were that kind of "hippie" might cackle with knowing glee but what that says about pretensions to counter-culture is pathetic. The LSD sequence is jarringly amateurish. What is the "glow" attaching to this overrated movie?

Francis Ford Coppola saw enough of something twisted (unselfconsciously dark)in Dennis Hopper's David Crosby clone to cast him as whacked-out journalist in "Apocalypse Now!". Hopper maximized this bent as director of "Blue Velvet".EASY RIDER was supposed to be American Hippie saga. Two years earlier, Michelangelo Antonioni directed the good but also overrated British hipster classic BLOW-UP(followed immediately by the entertainingly goofy "Zabriskie Point").Maybe our main men figured all they needed was a good sound-track(Dylan's on it too);super-bad hair cuts, and shades. The movie is NOT bad; it just isn't really good. If Hopper,Fonda and company believed they could throw together this "happening", maybe this was ultimately appealing to a generation that loved to indulge its fantasies... some as cultural rebels; unique moralists or political "revolutionaries". Some tried making movies (Not War)!EASY RIDER is quintessential result...

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Fonda and Hopper: non-conformist supermen!
Review: I would have to agree with the last guy on this one. This movie is all about the uptight squares who don't accept people who look, act or think differently than the majority. Granted, the film is a little outdated. But one needs to see it as more of a time capsule of a lost era than "some sixties movie." As for the DVD, the Steppenwolf soundtrack never sounded better. And I enjoyed the audio commentary also, but that could be because I like Dennis Hopper. If you're a big fan of the movie, you should get the DVD.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Why cant people let us have our dreams.
Review: To the guy who said this film is a bomb and its horrible... I can only suggest you understand that this picture isnt meant to be literal. Every peice of this film is symbolic in some form. Captain america living free, on his way to his dream. But captain america's america wont let him be who he wants because society isnt really free or ready to except the price of true freedom. People are affraid of the different. I suggest you remove the "Captain" from the name "captain america" to fully understand this film. Listen to his lines. He represents america and a generation of ideas. The tagline of the film is.. : A man went looking for America and couldn't find it anywhere! Replace "A man" with "America" Thats what the film is about. "America went looking for America and couldnt find it anywhere!" There is no freedom when people dont respect others choices of freedom. Their dreams. This film is about acceptance, friendship, the dream, america and the bueaty and the horror that life really is. This film is kind of dark in its ending. The blunt reality of society comes crashing down on Americas (captain) dream.


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