About the uneasy alliance between a gang of bikers and dirt poor Native Americans with the establishment, naturally, as their common foe. Directed by Richard Rush, who would go on to make the brilliant "The Stunt Man", the film delivers on all the action and stunts you'd expect from this genre while also injecting some obvious but effective social commentary. (The powers-that-be pit the bikers and Indians against each other to dissolve their strength and perpetuate their fringe status.)
The lead biker, Adam Roarke, is commanding and charismatic - he's not the meathead you'd expect from this sort of film. In fact, there is a gravity and depth to his performance that catches you off guard at first. He's a bewildering but fascinating mix of aggression and sensitivity, someone grappling with the scrambled values of the era. I liked Robert Walker Jr. too as the hot-headed, blue-eyed Indian. Often too boyish and elf-like, he's edgier and more natural here.
The movie has style to burn and stands up as an unusually well-mounted (and richly photographed) biker flick, with some brains behind the chains. Rush doesn't seem inhibited by the common-ness of the material - he builds the characters and moves his camera (it glides and whirls like a gymnast) in typically startling fashion. The whole exercise seems to center around Roarke's memorable line "If I'm going to be a bear, it might as well be a Grizzly."
