AllMovie

A filmmaker's quest to join an outlaw bicycle club morphs into a more intimate study of rebellion, drug addiction, underground sub-cultures, and the curious way in which we sometimes become precisely what we despise most. Directors Anthony Howard and Jacob Septimus' film began as an exploration of the militant, anti-corporate bike protests that gained prominence in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but along the way the filmmakers discovered a subculture within that subculture - a group of New York City tall-bike gangs who bonded like family, and frequently took to the streets in ritualistic jousting sessions. Somewhere beneath the compound fractures, cracked skulls, and cracked necks that go along with such dangerous endeavors, the filmmakers began to recognize the contradictions of die-hard individualists struggling to establish a group identity. But in order to truly understand what the Black Label Bicycle Club is truly all about, co-director Howard had to become part of the group. In the process of trying to accomplish that goal, a longstanding feud between the leader of the Black Label Bicycle Club and an ambitious rival came to a head, Howard's junkie girlfriend abandoned him, and a secret project that seemed to go against everything the Black Label Bicycle Club stood for prompted both the filmmakers, as well as some club members, to ponder the authenticity of their rebellion.