Easy Rider

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Easy Rider is incredibly entertaining and might even have potential for greatness, but is hampered somewhat by a few false steps and abrupt twists. The best parts of the movie are 1) an early Jack Nicholson performance that is so oddball and so funny that, even though he's only around for 20 or 30 minutes, he manages to steal the entire film, and 2) the scenes of the character's getting stoned (a lot of the movie) which, if nothing else, contains a lot of weird observational truths about the way people talk and behave when they are high. I'm not so keen on the random violent sequences and the virulently anti-redneck message of the film, as it just seems to distract from the rest of the film. The ending, where the protagonists are killed for no reason by some rednecks in a truck is abrupt to the point of feeling kind of stupid, but even worse is earlier when a major character is killed by rednecks (again for no real reason) and then in the next scene it's as if the characters have forgotten about it and no one mentions it again.

Dennis Hopper really hates rednecks, is the message here.