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Dennis Hopper (1936) was originally an actor who was featured in several
important films:
Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Giant (1956), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Hang 'Em High (1968), True Grit (1969), etc.
Easy Rider (1969), his first film as director, co-written with Terry Southern, is a mediocre character study that focuses on a
anarchic rebel of the hippy generation. The film is basically cheap propaganda
for the hippy ideology.
Wyatt (Peter Fonda), aka "Captain America", and Billy (Dennis Hopper) buy
cocaine in Mexico near an airport runway and sell it right away to a rich man
who shows up in a Rolly Royce. Wyatt hides the money in his motorcycle
and they take off for a long trek across the desert of the southern USA.
Mostly the trip is a pretext to show the dramatic landscape of the southern
states and to play rock music.
Wyatt picks up a hitch-hiker who is a hippy living in a commune.
They spend a day in the commune and we get a documentarian tour of its primitive
agricultural life and of its promiscuous sexual habits.
They enter a town where a parade is underway and ironically decide to join it.
The sheriff is not amused and arrests them. They are thrown in the same jail
with a drunk civil-rights lawyer, George (Jack Nicholson).
The following day a sober George in a suit and tie gets her out of jail.
He then gets on the back of Wyatt's motorcycle and takes off with them
through more desert.
At night they camp out under the stars and Wyatt offers George some marijuana.
George is afraid to try it but then lets Wyatt teach him how to smoke it.
George shares his belief in superior alien civilizations with them and
other mystical political theories.
They arrive in a rural area, finally leaving behind the desert.
The first town where they stop is old-fashioned. They turn heads when they
walk into a restaurant eccentrically dressed like they are.
The girls giggle, but the adult males are not amused.
The good townfolks began to make irreverent comments aloud about the three
strangers. The trio leaves without a word. The girls follow them outside and
ask for a ride on their motorcycles but the trio avoids trouble.
They camp again under the stars. George, again playing the philosopher, explains
that the townfolks is afraid of what they represent: freedom. People like to
hail freedom, but they get scared when they see really free people.
They smoke marijuana as usual amid a symphony of crickets and dogs.
After they fall asleep, they are surrounded by the men of the town, who
start beating them ferociously with no warning and just for pleasure.
When the men leave, George is dead.
Wyatt and Billy don't even think of revenge: they seem to take the event as
a natural disaster. Their only concern is to return the corpse and the
belongings to George's family.
The finally reach their destination, New Orleans, where the Mardi Gras parade
is about to begin, and decide to pay tribute to their fallen friend by visiting
George's favorite brothel.
They pick up two prostitutes, Karen and Mary, and spend the night and the day
doing drugs and making love. The
psychedelic trip is rendered via a free-form sequence of images.
Then they leave the city and camp in the woods.
They are ready to start a new trip, this time to the other coast, where they
plan to retire with the money they made from selling drugs.
As they are quietly riding on a country road, they are approached by some
fascist rednecks who shoot Billy in cold blood. Then they ride away and Wyatt's
only concern is to help his buddy. Wyatt gets back on the motorcycle to go
look for help but is confronted by the rednecks that have come back for him:
they shoot at the motorcycle's tank, making it explode. The camera takes off
to the sky like the smoke that rises from the blaze.
His acting career continued with tough roles in
The American Friend (1977), Apocalypse Now (1979), and Blue Velvet (1986).
The Last Movie (1971)
Out of the Blue (1980)
Colors (1988), written by Michael Schiffer, is a traditional "cop movie" set in the 1980s of Los Angeles' gang wars.
Los Angeles is being terrorized by gangs, notably the Crips and the Bloods.
Bob Hodges is an aging cop who is one year away from his retirement.
Bob is assigned a new partner, the young and impulsive Danny McGavin.
During their patrols they pick up small-time crooks, mostly involved in drug dealing. Bob knows them all and lets the harmless ones go, and some of the
criminals actually respect him.
Danny is the opposite and loves to use violence and arrest anyone commits the
slightest offence.
One day a boss of the Crips, Rocket, kills a member of the Bloods.
The cops look for clues about who did it.
As Bob and Danny are driving around, a thug throws a rock at their car.
Bob and Danny see a group of kids flee down the hill and chase them.
Bob and Danny find the 21st Street Gang, whose boss Leo, older than the others, is in good terms with Bob.
Leo demands to know who threw the rock: it's his teenage brother Felipe,
who is hiding on a tree. Bob forgives him, Leo lectures him.
A few days later the Bloods gather in a church to hold the funeral of the assassinated member, and the Crips open fire on the church.
Bob and Danny are nearby and chase the car of the Crips through the streets of
Los Angeles (with little respect for people and property). They cause the gangsters to crash their car near the Watts Towers, and their car explodes, but Bob's
and Danny's car flips over. They are not injured, and in fact, while they wait to be rescued, Bob invites Danny to
meets his wife and his children.
Danny has fallen in love with a girl who lives and works in that bad neighborhood, Louisa. Danny brings Louisa along, and it appears that Louisa is jealous of Bob's family life and looks at Danny as the one who could give her that life. Initially Louisa looks like a shy virgin, but that night Danny and Louisa make love right away.
Danny ruins his love story because his tough unwise manners make him unpopular in Louisa's neighborhood:
he punches and arrests a drug dealer despite having no evidence against him, and
he even sprays the face of a boy who was spraying a wall (removing the names of a rival gang). All the gangs now hate him, as do ordinary people.
His aggressive behavior also upsets Bob.
Bob and Danny eventually find a wanted suspect, High Top, and chase him as he flees on a motorcycle. Danny and Bob captured him in a restaurant. High Top is immediately imprisoned. He gets beaten by inmates of another gang. He is now ready to help the cops and tells them that Rocket of the Crips was the killer of the Blood member.
The cops find Rocket's van and surround it, but Rocket is not in it.
By interrogating two gang members, Bob and Danny find Rocket's girlfriend.
The cops storm her house and shoot a man who was having sex with the girl, but the man turns out to be someone else, also a Crips member. Words spread in the neighborhood that Danny is the cop who shot the innocent, even though it was another cop.
The Crips now want to kill Danny. Bob learns of it from the boss of
the 21st Street Gang, his semi-friend Leo. However, the Crips learn that Leo
told Bob
and so then they attack the 21st Street Gang while they are having a party.
They only kill an innocent woman. Danny is surprised when he arrives at the
house with Bob: he finds Louisa dressed like a prostitute and guesses that
she just had sex with a gang member. Louisa mocks him.
Leo decides that the 21st Street Gang must take revenge on the Crips.
His little brother Felipe demands to be admitted to the gang and proves that he is tough by fighting three gang members.
Leo's gang attacks Rocket's hideout and kills many Crips.
The cops arrive to stop the fight and Bob gets killed while arresting Leo.
Danny cries seeing Bob die.
Some time later, Danny has a new, younger partner, who behaves unwisely just like Danny used to, and Danny lectures him just like Bob used to lecture him.
Catchfire (1990)
The Hot Spot (1990)
Chasers (1994)
As an actor, he featured in Speed (1994) and Waterworld (1995).
Hopper died in 2010.
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