Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		3.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		2.0

Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man Blu-ray Movie Review

Did Don Draper write this thing?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 19, 2015

The film title is not intended to identify or promote a product or trade name of existing companies. No company has approved, sponsored or endorsed the title or content of this film.

Do you really care whether your favorite character in a film or television series drinks Coke or Pepsi? You may not, but the bean counters at Coke and Pepsi probably do, thinking that countless millions seeing a famous actor quaff down their brand of beverage will lead to thousands, and maybe more than “merely” thousands, of subliminally motivated sales. Brand name products typically don’t just “show up” in various media, and in fact their presence is highly negotiated and in some cases quite lucrative. While product placement has existed for well over a century (according to the not always very reliable Wikipedia, it actually started with Jules Verne, who mentioned several real life shipping companies in some of his books), public awareness of the “system” was generally minimal, until reports like the switch from M&M’s to Reese’s Pieces in E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial became the stuff of legend. Putting two iconic brand names in the title of a film would seem to be rising to a level far above subliminal advertising, but Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man doesn’t stop there, with other supporting characters sporting names like Jack Daniels, Jose Cuervo and (heaven forfend) Virginia Slim. (Weren’t cigarettes already pretty unpopular by 1991, when this film was originally released?) That may make the supposed "disclaimer" that starts the film (the italicized text posted above) a bit ingenuous seeming, though perhaps screenwriter Don Michael Paul thought it was simply "cute" to name characters after iconic brands without pausing to think about the consequences, legal or otherwise.

In the (then) near future of 1996, gas has climbed to an incredible three dollar-plus price per gallon, and society is under the thrall of a new street drug called Crystal Dream, a substance which is more or less injected directly into the eye to produce its hallucinogenic results. Harley Davidson (Mickey Rourke) hears about the drug on the radio but isn’t overly interested. Later, he wanders into a gas station slash convenience store which is in the throes of a hold up. Harley dispatches the bad guys with a couple of well timed (and aimed) moves, proving he’s no motorcycle riding pansy. A bit later his buddy Marlboro Man (Don Johnson) is seen doing more or less the same thing at a bar where some of the customers first get rowdy and then more out of control. Obviously these two are peas in a pod.

The fact that the clerk at the convenience store emits a hoary line like, “Hey, stranger, you got a name?” after Harley saves her butt is perhaps some indication of the lack of literate dialogue which runs through this odd but still occasionally appealing reboot of certain Western tropes within the confines of a supposedly futuristic urban setting. The main arc of the plot follows Harley and Marlboro as they decide to rob a bank to help fund their favorite watering hole, a place which is scheduled for destruction due to a new urban renewal project. While the pair does manage to pull of a heist, they’re surprised when their booty turns out to be not cash, but that aforementioned controlled substance, Crystal Dream. That in turn puts them at odds with the criminal element in charge of drug running, including supposed upright businessman Chance Wilder (Tom Sizemore).

Director Simon Wincer obviously had a soft spot for the Western genre, having directed both the miniseries Lonesome Dove and feature film Quigley Down Under directly prior to helming Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man. There’s some of the same insouciance that informed the Tom Selleck film here in this outing, but it’s often amped up to near cartoonish levels, especially in some of the action scenes which play almost like live action Chuck Jones sequences. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it tends to remove any real sense of tension or suspense from the proceedings.

What’s perhaps surprising about Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man is how tame it ultimately feels. Neither Rourke nor Johnson seem overly enthused about their roles, though Johnson at least brings a bit of a hangdog “good old boy” ambience to his performance. The film may careen rather wildly from set piece to set piece, but it does so from a veritable distance, as neither the on screen actors nor the behind the camera crew seems to be overly involved with the outcome. Some of the supporting performances, notably Vanessa Williams as a bar chanteuse, are woefully unconvincing, a tendency not helped by the at times haphazard screenplay and equally chaotic editing choices.

Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Shout! Factory with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. This is another film culled from the Metro Goldwyn Mayer archive which looks like it may have been sourced from an older master. Elements have the typical signs of age related wear and tear, with a more or less average amount of speckling, scratches and minor dirt on display. However, colors have faded noticeably, with flesh tones sometimes skewed toward a drab brown end of the spectrum. Detail and fine detail are acceptable but rarely at eye popping levels. As should probably be expected, the brightly lit outdoor sequences look the best, with a decently saturated palette that still looks reasonably accurate, and which pops more convincingly (at least relatively speaking) with regard to things like cloudless blue skies (see screenshot 3). Grain is generally organic looking, though can resolve somewhat on the rough side during the darkest sequences (notably some of the scenes within the bar). Some of the process photography (notably in the climax) looks fairly ragged when compared to the bulk of this outing (see screenshot 18).

Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man features an enjoyable lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mix which springs to rather fulsome life when any of the many source cues play on the soundtrack, or when one of the lunatic action sequences unfold. Dialogue is cleanly presented and well prioritized. There's some good support of lower frequencies, helping to make effects like the roar of the motorcycles resonate with lifelike acuity. Fidelity is fine and dynamic range rather wide.

Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Theatrical Trailer (1080i; 1:51)


• Vintage Featurette (1080i; 6:55) is an older EPK with some okay interviews.

Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Maybe if Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man had upped the dystopian future angle even slightly, the film would have had more of an edge to help it provide a counterweight to some of its more off the wall proclivities. What ultimately tends to enervate this enterprise, though, is the curiously uninvolved performances, as if everyone knew they were making a stinker and simply wanted to get through the shoot with some semblance of their dignity still intact. Those who like largely brainless outings with a generous supply of violence may get a passing kick out Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man, but even those people may want to keep track of their purchasing habits after having watched the film, if only to make sure that no nefarious subliminal messages have been injected directly into their brains (a la Crystal Dream). Technical merits are acceptable (video) to very good (audio) on this release for anyone considering a purchase.