Easy Rider Review!!!!

Easy Rider was and is much more than your standard Youth-Biker-Drugs-Sex exploitation flick, even though Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper had plenty of experience with these kinds of fly by night on the cheap productions. And these themes do exist aplenty in Easy Rider, but not long into the film you begin to realize that Fonda and Hopper have deeper agendas than just titillating or shocking the film audience. Released in 1969, Easy Rider might just be the seminal cinematic epitaph of the counter culture 1960's.

Easy Rider begins in Mexico where Captain America, also known as Wyatt (Fonda) and Billy (Hopper) score some Coke from the natives and transport it to LA where they sell it for cash to bankroll their motorcycle trip to New Orleans where they plan to experience Mardi Gras. We might expect a pot soaked, sex romp with the beautiful people along the way and we get a little of that, but mostly what we get is a rather scathing look at main-stream society and a sorrowful, cynical epitaph of the Age of Aquarius. While Wyatt and Billy look the part of two trippy hippies, they do enjoy the feel of cold cash in their palms in the best tradition of robber baron America. The image of Wyatt stuffing a tube containing several Ben Franklins into the star-spangled tear drop gas tank of his hog is a satiric slap not to mention phallic in the face of main-stream corporate America...an image that still resonates with this modern viewer today.

Soon the boys pick up a hitchhiking stranger, who appears to be a prophetic, almost Christ-like figure that leads them to a nearby commune in which the hippies are trying to build a community in the middle of the desert. Pragmatic and impatient Billy thinks they all are nuts trying to sow crops and raise families in the desert, but thoughtful Wyatt is drawn to the simplicity of the life and perhaps to the emotional security that he as a drifter may crave. But there is an undercurrent of despair even within this hopeful band. The boys gather around a simple meal with the squatters, one of whom says grace for the meal thanking God for a chance "to make a last stand." This whole sequence is informing of the film and story relating the death of not only the peace loving counter-culture, but perhaps the American Dream itself as it devolves into money grubbing isolationism. The John Ford inspired, Western frontier spirit represented by the two main characters Wyatt(Earp) and Billy(the Kid) seems little more than a picked over, flyblown carcass found along a nameless highway.

The boys next encounter George Hanson (Jack Nicholson) in jail after the boys are jailed for "parading without a permit" which kind of echoes Arlo Guthrie getting busted in Alice's Restaurant for dumping garbage without a permit. George, almost lovingly played by Nicholson, is a drunk lawyer with his silver spoon of privilege currently choking him to death. He gets the boys out of jail and is drawn to their quest of liberation.... biking and smoking their way to Mardi Gras. George sort of throws off the shackles of his quiet middle class lifestyle to experience the chaos and freedom of the road. He unfortunately pays for his liberation when local rednecks beat him to death in an attack on the "hippies" he is hanging with. It as if the dream of America is being beat to death along with him.

After a trippy LSD experience of wandering about New Orleans with two hookers, the boys are reflecting on their adventures around a campfire. Billy is quite satisfied, looking forward to continuing the easy life down in Florida. But Wyatt broods over their campfire, simply stating, "We blew it". Billy, along perhaps with the mystified viewer, asks what he means. I believe that Wyatt is grieving for the lost America, dedicated to losers, outcasts, and the huddled masses who yearn for a life of opportunity and freedom. Perhaps he is also mourning the death of mid-sixties' idealism or his parents' dream of a better life in the suburbs.

Whatever he means, Easy Rider is a pop culture visit to the Conrad heart of darkness that has many comic moments (especially with Nicholson), incredible scenery, and a sound track of classic Rock-n-Roll to please the greatest fan. What appears on the surface as a cheapo exploitation flick is actually an independent masterpiece that speaks a lot of truth about a legendary era.

TH Review's Rating: Five out of Five Stars!!!