Title: The Bikeriders
Describe This Movie In One Jurassic Park Quote:
DR. IAN MALCOLM: Ah, now eventually you do plan to have dinosaurs on your … on your dinosaur tour, right? Hello?
Brief Plot Synopsis: That’s when I fell for/The leader of the pack.
Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: 2 Evel Knievel Stunt Cycles out of 5
Tagline: “Freedom is for the fearless.”
Better Tagline: “Plot? Character arcs? A biker craves not these things.”
Not So Brief Plot Synopsis: When Kathy (Jodie Comer) agrees to meet her friend at a biker bar, she didn’t count on falling for Benny (Austin Butler) one of the Outlaws himself. Inexplicably marrying Benny and becoming a official “old lady,” she now has to contend with Outlaws founder Johnny (Tom Hardy), who has bigger plans for Benny.
“Critical” Analysis: Director Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter, Mud, Loving) based The Bikeriders on photographer Robert Lyon’s book of the same name, chronicling several years in the life of a motorcycle club called the Outlaws. The images obviously stuck with Nichols, as the idea for this movie floated around in his head for years. Having now seen the end product, I can tell you it’s probably better to just stick with the book.
I take no pleasure in saying that. Nichols’ Take Shelter was my favorite movie of 2011, and both Mud and Loving are solid films, but for a movie billed as a “crime drama,” Nichols includes surprisingly little crime in The Bikeriders.
There probably was something unassailably cool about seeing a biker gang thundering down the street for the first time. Nichols gets that aesthetic, so much so that he uses a variation of that shot multiple times. It’s neat … for a while, but then you start wondering when something’s going to happen.
But the movie looks and sounds great. Adam Stone’s cinematography and Chad Keith’s production design provide a perfect sepia-toned reproduction of ’60s and ’70s Chicago, and the soundtrack is stuffed with era-appropriate cuts from underused artists like Magic Sam and the Sonics.
So it’s too bad The Bikeriders is let down by its script and several of the principal cast members. As the film’s narrator and linchpin of its love triangle, Comer does what she can, all while serving up an accent reminiscent of Dan Aykroyd’s character from Tommy Boy. Butler, on the other hand, is the ambulatory personification of “flat affect,” and Hardy is all forehead furrows and facial tics. Johnny could very well be the grandfather of The Drop’s Bob Saginowski.
Only Hardy, Michael Shannon (serving as erstwhile comic relief Zipco), and Damon Herriman (Johnny’s lieutenant Brucie) look like actual bikers. Butler’s perfect teeth, perfect complexion, and just-so tousled hair not only don’t fit, they don’t change at all over the course of what we’re to believe is eight years of hard living.
What happened to the swaggering insouciance of Elvis? Or the feral psychopathy of Dune Part 2‘s Feyd Rautha? Describing what Butler does here as “sleepwalking” gives somnambulism a bum rap. Worse, it’s impossible to explain Kathy’s attraction to him. She herself describes Benny as having “no feelings,” and “believing we’re all better off dead.” What a catch.
Nichols romanticizes the early days of the biker era, when the Outlaws concerned themselves with drinking beer and customizing their rides. And there’s a story to be told about watching something you created become corrupt, but it’s glossed over with images of the “new guys” doing drugs and attempting to rape Kathy.
Yeah, Comer gets another sexual assault subplot on the heels of The Last Duel. It’s interesting that Nichols uses it to exemplify the “badness” of the new breed of Outlaws when he plays a similar incident when Kathy first meets the gang for laughs.
From the setting, cinematography, and soundtrack, Nichols is clearly in his Martin Scorsese period. Problem is, stuff actually happens in Scorsese movies. The Bikeriders may be a hang, but it’s not much more dynamic than the photos that inspired it.
The Bikeriders is in theaters today.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
