The Hard Ride 2

Movies

THE STORY

Carry me home

The Hard Ride opens on a battlefield.

At first in the haze, what looks like a formation of soldiers advances, rifles flaring. The plaintive strains of the spiritual Swing Low, Sweet Chariot filter in as the line gets closer and closer. Until sun glinting off chrome reveals motorcycle riders in the desert. The song turns jubilant as engines roar over the band of angels, including a Black man named Lenny, riding two-up on one of the choppers.

A lonesome choir intervenes under gunfire and then, Vietnam.

From a stretcher, a dying Lenny chokes out his last words to his vigilant buddy Phil, walking alongside him.

“Don’t leave me, babe”.

Stateside, California. Phil accompanies his friend’s body to the mortuary with Father Tom, Lenny’s mentor and head of the Victorville orphanage where Lenny grew up. In a wrenching letter, Lenny bequeaths Phil his motorcycle, Baby, and makes one final request: Bring his only other family – the biker Big Red and the gang Lenny used to ride with – to his funeral.

Another kind of war

At a garage outside Victorville, Phil the decorated Marine Sergeant meets Baby, the gleaming knucklehead chopper. He also encounters one of the multiple prejudices that will surface throughout his journey when the mechanic confides Lenny was “one of the only ones I ever took to”.

After a shaky start on the freshly tuned-up cycle, Phil’s tentative smile turns to pure joy – his first sweet taste of freedom.

Maybe you’ll fall in love with Baby.

Phil pulls up to Mom’s Diner. Sheryl, Lenny’s former girlfriend, cries when she sees Baby without him. Inside, Phil innocently tells her Lenny used to talk about her all the time. “Did he? You men share everything don’t you.” Their awkward meeting is interrupted by two bikers who come into the diner offering to take him to Big Red. Phil readily accepts their generosity. He rides with them to a biker haven in the desert, where he quickly learns he’s being conned.

His first run-in with the outlaw counterculture – a ruthless biker named Grady who pretends to be Big Red in order to take Baby and chop her up – ends in violence. But this isn’t Vietnam, and Phil is naively unprepared for combat at home. By fighting back, humiliating Grady and leaving him stranded in the desert, Phil plays into Grady’s notion of disturbed Vietnam vet, unwittingly touching off a war of vengeance on top of greed.

While taking refuge at Sheryl’s for the night, Phil accepts her offer of Lenny’s clothes so he can change out of his uniform. Mistaking his quiet moment of reminiscence for disgust, a defensive Sheryl accuses Phil of the same racial prejudices everyone else in her crowd harbours against black men, particularly a white woman with a black man. She tells him to drop the act and go home, that Lenny doesn’t need it anymore. Phil is frustrated, blindsided by another confrontation with one more person who’s got him figured all wrong. But he needs Sheryl’s help to find Big Red and bury his friend.

I’m right here Lenny. I ain’t leavin’ ya.

Let the music play

In the morning Phil and Baby hit the open road again, this time with an uneasy Sheryl inching as far back as she can behind a man she doesn’t trust. Riding through the breathtaking mountains and vistas of California, Phil gets acquainted with the freewheeling biker style. Along the way to wherever the elusive Big Red might be, they stop at the scenic places Sheryl and Lenny used to visit, and Sheryl feels more than a physical resemblance between the two men. Phil kisses her, she pulls back. At their camp by a picturesque lake, Sheryl offers Phil a joint, having heard that everybody blew grass over in Vietnam. He refuses. Confused but attracted to this introspective soldier, she bites him, telling him if he wants her, he has to take the whole package or nothing. She strips down to her underwear, wading into the cool lake. Phil joins her.

Everybody’s entitled to be what they are.

The ride is cozier from then on, with Sheryl snuggling up to Phil on the back of the bike while schooling him in the biker ethos. When the lovers are pulled over by a cop, Sheryl sternly instructs Phil to “Never look at The Man”. He nervously obeys until the cop turns out to be a polite, would-be biker who just admires their ride. The road gets darker when Sheryl and Phil are assaulted by a group of marauding teenagers looking for weed. It’s the life and culture Sheryl is used to but one Phil can’t - and won’t - get the chance to understand. Complications arise with Sheryl’s confession to Phil that she is getting hung up on him. And that she was Big Red’s girl, but left when he told her she had to service all his biker friends. Phil doesn’t want to hear the rest of the story. He just wants to find Big Red, get him to Lenny’s funeral, and go home. They head to the Apache Camp to talk with Big Red’s father Little Horse, who tells Phil where to find his degenerate son.

That’s the way I want it

It is at Shannon’s dingy brothel Phil finally comes face to face with the truth, and the notorious Big Red. Phil’s tolerance of Red and his hooker turns to contempt when he realizes his beloved friend’s friends are a sham – they only kept Lenny around “for the scooter and his broad”. Phil has a promise to keep. He offers to give Big Red the bike if he and his pals agree to come to Lenny’s funeral.

Back at the Apache Camp, all Phil wants is to pick up Sheryl and get on with his mission; Red wants to pick up with Sheryl and play. Phil’s code of honour is too strong, and he cares for Sheryl too much to just let it be. With the battle-worn weariness of a soldier, Phil throws the first punch. He and Big Red brawl in the dirt until Red concedes, with a grudging admiration for Phil but one more hit, “no broad on earth is worth all this hassle.”

By now with his innocence and good intentions all but lost, Phil is more determined than ever to honour Lenny’s last wishes and let the crazy eat his dust. Despite Sheryl’s protests, he turns over the coveted pink slip, Baby’s ownership, to the undeserving Big Red, and they head back to Victorville to make the call to Father Tom. Sheryl is smiling and Phil is lighter on this short trip. Freedom is within reach, the long, hard ride to lay his friend to rest, almost over.

Live for today

At Mom’s, Phil leaves a message for Father Tom so burial arrangements can be made.

His relief is short-lived. Grady’s hoodlums stroll into the diner, threatening Sheryl and taking Phil back to the menacing Grady. When they’re gone, a hysterical Sheryl careens into the road to flag down Big Red and his gang as they approach the diner.

Once more, Phil rides into Grady’s camp. He is thrown into a bus, Baby is hidden from sight.

Big Red and his gang roll in, ready for the inevitable bloody brawl. Clever Red easily outwits a not-too-bright Grady by telling him he needs Phil to sign over the pink on the chopper.

Grady’s thugs bring Phil out into the open. Red and his former opponent exchange a brief glance.

Then Red punches Grady in the face. The fight is on. Dirt and bodies fly, somebody lights up a car.

A sudden gunshot shatters the melee.

Six volleys

Father Tom, clad in funeral vestments, stands wistfully over a flag-draped coffin.

The military honour guard fires the ceremonial shots as the camera scans the crowd, resting on the faces of twenty or so mourners; a tearful Sheryl, Big Red, bikers, townspeople.

Lenny’s Baby is there, beside the grave.

The angelic chorus of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot fades in along with a military dirge as Father Tom solemnly reads the scripture.

The camera slowly rises up. Two coffins, side by side.

The battlefield is cleared.

I’m right here Lenny. I ain’t leavin’ ya.

A PROMISE MADE IS A DEBT UNPAID

BACK

MORE HARD

RIDE

“Don’t leave me babe”

“ I’m right here Lenny,

I ain’t leavin ya”