''The Loveless'' (originally titled ''Breakdown'') is a 1981 American

outlaw biker An outlaw motorcycle club is a motorcycle subculture generally centered on the use of cruiser motorcycles, particularly Harley-Davidsons and choppers, and a set of ideals that purport to celebrate freedom, nonconformity to mainstream culture, ...

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super ...

written and directed by

Kathryn Bigelow Kathryn Ann Bigelow (; born November 27, 1951) is an American filmmaker. Covering a wide range of genres, her films include '' Near Dark'' (1987), '' Point Break'' (1991), '' Strange Days'' (1995), '' K-19: The Widowmaker'' (2002), ''The Hurt Loc ...

and Monty Montgomery, the feature film directorial debut of both directors. It is an independent film and stars

Willem Dafoe Willem James Dafoe (; born July 22, 1955) is an American actor. He is the recipient of various accolades, including the Volpi Cup for Best Actor, in addition to receiving nominations for four Academy Awards, four Screen Actors Guild Awards, t ...

and musician Robert Gordon, who also did the music for the film. The film has been compared to ''

The Wild One ''The Wild One'' is a 1953 American crime film directed by László Benedek and produced by Stanley Kramer. The picture is most noted for the character of Johnny Strabler, portrayed by Marlon Brando, whose persona became a cultural icon of the 1 ...

''.

Plot

A motorcycle gang of greasers becomes involved in trouble in a small southern town. The group of bikers congregate at a rural roadside diner and gas station en route to Daytona. Their stay in town is extended as one of them, Hurley, has to fix his motorcycle which should take upwards of a day. The owners of the diner and gas station are nervous and one of the customers, Tarver ( J. Don Ferguson), seems to be violently resentful toward them. The bikers hang around the garage, tinkering with their bikes, playing chicken with switch-blades, drinking, dancing and so on. A teenage girl named Telena, who is Tarver's daughter, arrives in a red open-topped Corvette. Vance (

), one of the bikers, talks to her and they go for a drive, buying beers and whiskey for the rest of the gang. Vance and Telena go to a motel room where they have sex. As they are about to leave, they are disturbed by gun shots outside. It is Tarver, who spotted her car, and in a typical fit of anger decided to shoot out the car tires in order to punish her. He breaks into the room and takes Telena with him. Some of the other bikers, in a chance encounter, run Tarver's car off the road, causing him to crash his car. Telena is injured in the accident. Later in the evening, the gang is in a local bar. Augusta, one of the waitresses from the diner who is bored with life in town, performs a striptease dance and the male customers of the bar become a little feverish. While in the men's room of the bar, Tarver convinces Sid, his brother, to join him in ambushing and killing the bikers later along the road, that despite Tarver having earlier "earnestly" congratulated Vance for the sexual encounter with Telena as fulfilling the needs of a man. Ricky, one of the bikers, goes to the bathroom to use the urinal, and Tarver, sensing an opportunity, attacks Ricky with his pants down. The struggle spills out into the bar where the violence escalates and gun shots ring out. Tarver is shot, and as the confusion in the bar reigns, the assumption is that the bikers have shot him in revenge, but it is Telena who has shot her father in response to his lifelong abuse of her and her mother, who committed suicide in that abuse. Further gun-shots are fired. Outside, Vance stands smoking and sees Telena, now in the driver seat of her car, proceed to use the same pistol to shoot herself dead. The bikers quietly get on their motorcycles as they ride out of town.

Cast

as Vance *Marin Kanter as Telena * Robert Gordon as Davis * J. Don Ferguson as Tarver * Tina L'Hotsky as Sportster Debbie (credited as Tina L'hotsky) * Lawrence Matarese as La Ville * Danny Rosen as Ricky * Phillip Kimbrough as Hurley * Ken Call as Buck * Elizabeth Gans as Augusta * Margaret Jo Lee as Evie * John King as John * Bob Hannah as Sid

Production

Production on ''The Loveless'' began on September 22, 1980 and the entire shoot took just 22 days. The resources of MoMA's Film Study Center were utilised by Bigelow to create the aesthetic of the film. The title of the film changed twice, originally titled ''U.S 17'', then ''Breakdown'', then ''The Loveless''.

Reception

The

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website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

reported that 73% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 11 reviews, with an average rating of 6.3/10. On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, the film has a weighted average score of 44 out of 100 based on 5 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

References

External links