MovieChat Forums > Kill the Irishman (2012) Discussion > Why Bikers are always getting beat up by...

Why Bikers are always getting beat up by Mobsters?


In this flick Danny Green destroys a biker on the hood of a car, then in A Bronx Tale-Sonny and his crew beat the heck out of a gang of bikers in a bar, and lastly in the Sopranos last season Tony and Chris shoot one of the Vipers and steal cases of wine those bikers were trying to steal for themselves. I was thinking is there ever a movie or show where a biker actually beats up a mobster for a change?

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I haven't seen this movie yet, but did Danny take out an entire crew of Bikers or was it a man-to-man fight? Bikers may look and act scary with their tattoos and burly frames but for the most part they're just like most guys who put up a front of intimidation.

I'm not really well-read in the inner-workings of biker gangs, but just from hearing in local and national news stories they don't seem the type to really execute brutal force and intimidation on people outside of their inner-circle. Compared to a Mexican Cartel gang, bikers seem nothing more than a social club for guys who like to ride motor bikes, nothing more.

(¯`i´¯)´·¸.)‹^›

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Naughty_God, you seem to be talking about biker gangs of today which are predominantly full of a lot of aging former bikers or busnessmen who are going through a mid life crisis of a sort. But, in the 60's and 70's they were a dangerous group to run across. Lots of drugs and violence back then...they are too old now for that stuff.

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Some Bikers were disturbing the block, so Danny confronts them with his own group of guys and forces a 1-on-1 fist fight with their leader, and Danny beats him to a pulp.

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That scene in 'The Sopranos' was quite plausible. It wasn't like they beat them down in a fist fight. They sneaked up behind the bikers with guns and caught them by surprise. And then stole from them and ran away without giving the bikers a fair chance. In 'The Bronx Tale' it was a bit over the top but the mafia controlled Bronx back in the day and they were quite powerful.
The scene in this movie doesn't seem real and I'm surprised that they never get back at Danny. Even though at that period in the movie he isn't a big shot. He's just an enforcer/collector for a jewish loan shark cum mafia associate. Basically he's pretty much a nobody at this point and beats the ring leader of a biker gang and scares them off.

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Try telling that to the Hell's Angels!... No really, don't.

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[deleted]

Organized crime and biker gangs have always been opposing organizations, the mob (for the most part) views them as blood-lusting hicks on bikes that deal in filth (crystal meth cheifly now, then in the 60's-70's it was intimidation that 'moved in on' the mob's domain). It's kinda like the mob sees itself as the trained army, and bikers are just weekend warriors/militia without that sense of "honor". As far as the scene in the movie goes, four guys with shotguns forced the biker leader into the street and Danny sang him an Irish lullaby. The bikers may have wanted vengeance, but they knew that A.) Danny Greene proved he was a man not to be f'd with and B.) Knew the labor unions+mob was not a war they wanted to spark/could win. It's all about respect and survival.

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" Its explained in Southpark"
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If youre in Hell what can I say?You probably deserved it anyway.I guess Im gonna find out any day.

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There is a scene in Stone Cold when the sadistic biker gang meets a bunch of mobsters in a restaurant. They place a bike helmet on the table, and inside is the head of a mafioso. The gangsters are frightened into cooperating.

"...if that was off, I'd be whoopin' your ass up and down this street." ~ an irate Tarantino

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I kept wondering, "is this an homage to A Bronx Tale and maybe The Sopranos?" If it was, it was unnecessary, unless of course it actually happened. You can see it coming from a mile away when Danny Green and his family first moved into the poor neighborhood. Plus, there's never repercussions in mob movies for beating up these bikers, which rings false.

I'd imagine that back in the sixties and seventies, patched-in "1%" bikers were stone-cold killers. A majority of them were disillusioned Vietnam vets who were on crank. Combine that with PTSD, and you'd have a gang of vengeful lunatics who wouldn't take a beating lightly.

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I think a lot of you guys need to do a quick search on the... Mongols, Hells Angels, Outlaws, Banditos etc. I don't think anyone in here would talk to them like they are pu*sies. Just do a quick google, they are still quite dangerous. Nobody heard about the shootout/riot between the HA and Mongols in that casino just a few years ago? They might not step to the mafia, but they aren't pacifists, to say the least.

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[deleted]

There is a fascinating episode of gangland (Devils Fire) where the former President of the Pagans, Jimmy DeGregorio kidnapped two made men of the Philly mob. When one tried to escape by running for a group of policemen, DeGorgio caught the guy and shot him in front of the police.

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Yes, in real life there have been stories of Biker/Mafia wars. And the Pagans gangland was pretty cool.

But I think when it comes to movies and why its a common theme in mafia films. Is that there is something about a bunch of plain clothes, or suit wearing gangsters beating the crap out of a bunch of Bikers who generally look scarier/tougher and more obviously "gangster" And the bikers don't seem to realize there is a whole other class of "gangster" that don't need to dress scary to get their point across. At least in movies.

There is usually a scene where the head biker disrespects a mafia guy not knowing or not believing the guy in the suit is capable of their type of violence. then queue to the biker ass whopping scene. Bikers just seem like an easy group of people to use to show how TOUGH the mafia guys are. Like " see they even beat up bikers!"

" I intend to live forever......So far, so good."

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What other mob movies, besides 'A Bronx Tale' and this movie, has this type of scene in it? Just curious, can't think of another, but if it's so "common" I'd like to see some more. Thanks.

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lol don't think its that common.. but once or twice out of like 5 mobster movies is enough haha..

" I intend to live forever......So far, so good."

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I remember a line from Hunter S. Thompson's book on Hell's Angels, where one of their Mamas/OleLadies says:

"any two Angels can take any five other guys"

I wonder how many times she had actually seen credible testing of that theory, but, yeah..

As for 'Bikers vs Organised crime guys", here, these days, Bikers, or at least Lebanese muslim aholes who would not know one end of a motorcycle from the other but have somehow wound up wearing patches such as Bandidos, --ARE-- organised crime.
So there would be no conflict.

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Yes. Bikers beat up everyone in Sons of Anarchy.

As for Danny Greene, one look at his history should make it clear why the chances of any bikers in that clubhouse ending a fight with him conscious were remote at best. Besides that, there are a lot of Har(d)ley riders out there. They come complete with realistic chain wallet, henna tattoo, un-manicured beard, bike, and attitude but Sunday night they are in full transformation back to cubicle dwelling stockbroker. Biker is not synonymous with badass. Know too many of them, both real and "reel". Most mobsters of Greene's caliber are mobsters on Monday morning too.

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These days, the mob and the bikers are basically a synergistic set off organizations, trading off of what each does better. It’s like Microsoft and Intel.

But say in the 1960s or 1970s, the mob guys were tough on their own. Most of them were in street gangs as teens and the basic business of being a gangster was often violent and involved physical intimidation of people.

Bikers were also tough and violent, but their problem was being easily identifiable and hanging out as a group. This makes them an easy target. They’re also “outlaws” without many allies. The mob, though, is basically ingrained in the community and is able to call on more allies, sympathetic friends and family, corrupt government officials and police, and so on.

I don’t think the mob fights with bikers at random, either. I think was often on an organized basis — the mob was more a less an expert at armed robbery, so if they had a serious beef with the bikers they were showing up in numbers and with guns.

Honestly, I don’t think their paths crossed much until the late 1970s and 1980s when the mob got weakened and the bikers got better at being their own organized crime network. By then the bikers and mob were mostly allies and doing business, both because they had things the other wanted and to serve as a bulwark against emergent gangs like the Jamaicans, the Russians, the various black street gangs who were also organizing, and Mexicans.

Nowadays the bikers are probably a bigger organized crime threat than the mob. In fact, there’s a big biker contingent in the prison gang the Aryan Brotherhood, and this gang is extremely dangerous and well organized. When John Gotti was in prison he tried to buy protection from the AB.

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Also, this movie did make the physical point that Danny (at least as portrayed in this movie by THIS actor) was a tall, huge, brawny man who could take out anybody one-on-one(as he did with the big "Polish bodyguard" in an earlier fight scene.

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