Leather and Iron (2002)

Like many American motorcycle enthusiasts, successful corporate attorney John Telliman has spent thousands of dollars customizing his bike so that he can enjoy his Sundays riding the open road with his friends. However, the widower and father of a college-aged daughter is restless, nagged by a feeling that his biker lifestyle is missing an element of adventure and danger. The feeling is heightened when he and his friend Bobby Douglas go riding and are engulfed in a group of menacing outlaw bikers on their custom choppers. Telliman convinces Douglas to help him experience the atmosphere of hanging out with "real" bikers, and their search soon leads them to a criminal bike club's stripper bar in Downtown Phoenix, where they get a sampling of the dark element of biking. But the dream becomes a nightmare when Douglas is found dead the next morning and Telliman is later assaulted by bikers who believe that he has taken an item from them known only as the Package. Disbelieving his protests that he knows nothing, the bikers give him until the weekend to tell them what they want to know or they'll come looking for him # after they've "taken care of" his daughter Christine. With his life and family threatened and the police suspecting him in Douglas' death, Telliman tries to protect his daughter and make matters right # but soon finds that the bikers are not the only ones looking for the Package. Chased down and tortured by an Asian gang, then abducted and interrogated by a mysterious corporate entity, he is ultimately confronted by the leader of the bikers, who reveals the frightening nature of the deadly Package and for whom it was created. The situation becomes even more desperate when Telliman learns that Christine has been kidnapped and is being held in exchange for the Package. Now faced with his dearest blood being the price for his ill-advised quest for adventure, Telliman is propelled into an explosive showdown # and the darkness to which he is fated. * * * * * Leather and Iron, with its impressive visuals and intense story reflecting on contemporary issues, is a fast-paced voyeuristic journey into the worlds of the Rich Urban Biker and its criminal counterpart, the Outlaw Biker. Shot completely on location in and around Phoenix, the movie showcases exotic Sonoran Desert landscapes as well as upscale city nightclubs and a dark outlaw biker stripper club. The film features hundreds of bikes, regarded by enthusiasts worldwide as chrome works of art, and is punctuated with intense action sequences that include a six-minute motorcycle chase through Downtown Phoenix.