BIKER BOYZ

CAST: Laurence Fishburne, Derek Luke, Orlando Jones, Kid Rock,Vanessa Bell Calloway, Djimon Hounsou, Lisa Bonet, Brendan Fehr, Larenz Tate, Eriq La Salle

DIRECTOR: Reggie Rock Bythewood

"Supposedly based on a real subculture in southern California, ‘Biker Boyz’ is ‘The Fast and the Furious’ on two wheels, with an Oedipal subtext thrown in…Director Bythewood is a competent visual stylist, capturing the adrenaline and testosterone of these macho rituals. That doesn't make up for the predictability of the script but then, this movie isn't aimed at an audience that's overly concerned with its literary quality…Derek Luke is a definite talent…He invests Kid with more emotional weight than the script knows what to do with. Acting powerhouse Laurence Fishburne does the same thing with Smoke, though he looks puffy-faced and paunchy." --Marshall Fine, The Journal News

"What is an actor with the crunching gravitas of Laurence Fishburne doing in a flimsy motorcycle movie like ‘Biker Boyz’?… In contrast to the other bodies in a movie that serves up its younger characters as a gleaming parade of tattooed beef and cheesecake, Mr. Fishburne appears bloated, paunchy and enervated, and bearing a chip on his shoulder… ‘Biker Boyz,’ directed by Reggie Rock Bythewood, imagines itself a leaner, hipper, African-American-slanted answer to ‘The Fast and the Furious,’ but it has little of the visceral energy of its forerunner and none of its adolescent sense of grandeur."--Stephen Holden, The New York Times

"‘Biker Boyz,’ a motorcycle drag-race saga set in Southern California, is a blatant re-spin of‘The Fast and the Furious’ that also happens to be a far better movie…Derek Luke, a terrific actor, never lets you forget that Kid, in his moody bluster, really is a kid, or that he's trying far too hard to prove something…The great Fishburne is a wizard at conjuring mystique, whether he's staring down the upstart Kid or eating Kid Rock, as a scrungy fellow racer, for breakfast." --Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

"‘Biker Boyz’ is the kind of movie Howard Hawks would have made if he'd lived long enough to feel the heat of hip-hop's impact on the culture at large…Beyond its mood and motion, ‘Biker Boyz’ also provides an occasion to see the cream of African American acting talent making the most of this material…The women, especially Vanessa Bell Calloway as Kid's mom and Lisa Bonet as Smoke's once and future girlfriend, are just sexy and vivid enough to make you want more of them." --Gene Seymour, The Los Angeles Times

"There are several races in the film, but they don't generate the kind of pulse-quickening suspense that the races did in ‘The Fast and the Furious,’ a four-wheel street-racing picture, did…Laurence Fishburne is a strong presence in the central role, but the character isn't very interesting; he's good at racing, he's not a bad man, he has few complexities…We need a stronger conflict, as we had in ‘The Fast and the Furious," and better and more special effects (the crashes all seem to happen at a distance)." --Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

"Robust performances from Laurence Fishburne and Derek Luke raise the laughably-titled motorcycle action flick ‘Biker Boyz’ slightly above its veneer as a two-wheel rip off of ‘The Fast and the Furious’…Tapping into the ambitious, reckless and frustrated aggression of his character, Luke is charismatic, handsome and a little feral as Kid…Applying familiar intensity to his role, Fishburne brings wisdom and weight to the seemingly unbeatable Smoke…‘Biker Boyz’ is a satisfying ride. But the satisfaction is empty calorie entertainment, an experience that speeds away from your memory faster than it takes to walk to the car after the movie's over." --Bob Blackwelder, San Francisco Examiner