Vance (Willem Dafoe) is a greaser in the 50's. He rides his motorcycle into a remote roadside diner. More bikers arrive on their way to Daytona. This is written and directed by Kathryn Bigelow and Monty Montgomery. Monty seems to have gone on to produce documentaries. I have to assume that this has a lot of Bigelow's fingerprints in her first full length feature. It's a lot of nostalgia for the 50's bikers but not necessarily the narrative drive to give the story tension. It does have Dafoe and the other actors are not that bad. The issue is that they are luxuriating and stylizing but the story moves very slowly. In one section, a girl literally takes Dafoe on a ride in her T-bird. Quite frankly, she should be introduced earlier. She needs to be the stranded motorist in the beginning. She needs to be the second lead of the movie. Tarver needs to be a bigger threat. He needs more screen time. He needs a bigger actor. He needs to be bigger. This movie needs more violence early. It needs an earlier dose of intensity. It needs more drive.

A motorcycle gang stops at a small town in the South, on their way to Daytona in Kathryn Bigelow's directorial debut (co-directed with Monty Montgomery). It's also Willem Dafoe's credited screen debut, and he plays the lead.

At first I was annoyed by the perfection of hair, costumes and sets: all the hair perfectly set, all the leathers looking like their just came from the showroom, all the motorcycles just off the factory floor. Then, as the movie advanced and the imperfection of the characters were revealed, I realized it was an indictment of 1950s Amerika, with a perfect surface covering up social and psychological rot. It was an amazing insight, or would be if William Dieterle had never existed, but he did. Still, it points to a demand for such movies, and who can blame a first-time film maker for treading safe ground?

1959: A gang of bikers en route to Daytona, Florida who include the surly, disaffected Vance (a smoothly self-assured performance by Willem Dafoe in his film debut) and restless hothead Davis (nicely played by rockabilly icon Robert Gordon) are forced to make an unwanted pit stop in a sleepy Southern hamlet when one biker has engine trouble with his chopper. Complications ensue when Vance becomes involved with tempting teen tramp Telena (a splendidly brassy'n'sassy turn by the cute Marin Kanter),which doesn't go over well with the extremely uptight and intolerant square townspeople.

Written and directed by Kathryn ("Near Dark," "Blue Steel") Bigelow and Monty Montgomery (who later produced "Twin Peaks" and "Wild at Heart"),"The Loveless" sure ain't your average trashy B-biker exploitation action romp. Instead it's something much better and more ambitious: a beautifully brooding, stylish and intriguing existential mood piece that's rich in a pungently evocative atmosphere that exquisitely seethes with barely suppressed menace, violence, despair, ennui, malaise, sexuality and homo-eroticism. Doyle Smith's gorgeously glossy, gleaming cinematography, the uniformly excellent acting, the vivid and meticulous recreation of the 50's, Robert Gordon's fantastic rockabilly score, the cool hepcat slang ("We got the scratch"),the deliberately slow pace, and the strikingly grim and tragic conclusion further strengthen the potent and intoxicating spell this film casts on the viewer, sucking you in with a masterful ease that's truly something to behold. This is the kind of supremely subtle and low-key picture which initially doesn't seem like much as you watch it, but has an uncanny way of sticking with you long after you see it.