Chrome Soldiers

Chrome Soldiers – Reviewed by Skids Poppe

It’s twenty years after Vietnam–Do you know where your Harley is?

I do, and so do the group in Chrome Soldiers, this USA network film just released on video.

See, here’s the deal.  I saw this flick on cable and knew that eventually, they would release for you guys out there who don’t have cable but do read this column every month.  I even tried to track down what the cover art looks like, but I got a runaround that makes the Watergate break-in look like it was done right, so you guys are just gonna have to settle for this great picture from the show.

But what does that have to do with the story?  Nothing.  I just wanted to pass along the misery I felt while trying to do something good.  What the story does have, though, is five Vets who ride new Harley’s and wear black leather with fancy airbrushing on the back. These five guys (plus the guy who gets burned up at the start of the film) make up the Chrome Soldiers of the title (pretty damn imaginative).

Can you guess what’s happening here?  One of the guys is dead so all the rest have to figure out what happened.  Not the most original of plots, but does that really make any difference?  I think not.  The Soldiers are led by (a helmeted) Gary Busey.  It’s real good to see him back on a bike (let’s face it, after his wreck, it’s real good to see him walking).  Busey is Flash, brother of the deceased and a Desert Storm War Hero (boy, how the times they have a changed), who is on his way home to visit his brother when all of this goes down.  Home, in this case, happens to be a non descript small town someplace where you usually find small towns.  You know, the kind where there’s a corrupt sheriff (in this town, that honor goes to a slimy William Atherton) a gung ho wimp of a deputy and a lot of people for whom the term ‘Red Neck’ is a step up the evolutionary scale.  This is the kind of place where anybody who shows the least bit of interest in something with a chain drive is instantly called a “scummy biker” with absolutely no regard to the inner qualities of the man. Definitely not the place you want to take your mother on a Sunday (however, if you want to impress your girl, a Saturday night fight would fit right in).

But is it worth watching?  You bet your grass. (That’s a pun. See, the reason everybody’s dying is ’cause they’re smuggling dope and…nevermind) Anything with Gary Busey and Yaphet Kotto (he’s in this too) is worth watching. Chrome Soldiers is especially good because it gives us Bikers a positive image.  When biker’s are the good guys, you know somebody in Hollywood’s got their head in the right place.  The last line of the film sums it up: “Heroes, who’d’ve thought.”

Skids wants to be a hero, so if anyone has anything they need rescued, give him a call.  Applications are also now being taken for an expendable sidekick.