THE BIKERIDERS - Mark Reviews Movies

The Bikeriders, Focus Features

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | June 20, 2024

It's all a lot of fun until the picnics become fistfights, the fists start holding knives, and someone doesn't think that somebody else might bring a gun to a knife fight. There's a steady escalation of violence and consequences to the story of The Bikeriders, inspired by photographer Danny Lyon's book about an outlaw motorcycle club/gang that rose to notoriety during the late 1960s and beyond. Writer/director Jeff Nichols observes his fictionalized account of that gang with the passive objectivity of a journalist, which turns out to be a fascinatingly dull choice.

It's intriguing, to be sure, because Nichols seems to get the sociological details right. We watch as this insulated group of motorcycle enthusiasts go from racing on the weekends in and near Chicago to becoming a group with some fame—and infamy—on a regional and national level. Along the way, everyone just gets used to each new step up that ladder, even though none of them expected or particularly wanted to take those steps in the first place. When you're caught up in it, you don't even notice it happening, until some sort of shock makes you realize it's too late to do much of anything about it.

That idea comes forth pretty quickly in Nichols' relaxed but rambling narrative, as Kathy (Jodie Comer), our narrator, recalls the first time she encountered the Vandals, a small motorcycle club in the Chicago area at the time. She was bringing money to a friend at a bar, and suddenly, she found herself being ogled and manhandled by a group of guys in matching leather jackets. Telling the story to photographer Danny (Mike Faist) some time later, Kathy points out that her white jeans were covered in dirty handprints by the time she left the bar.

She also explains how the sight of Benny (Austin Butler), a young and handsome member of the group, made it all tolerable. It was more than that, in fact. Kathy left the bar with the stranger, had him drive her home, watched as he sat across the street from her house for hours, wasn't bothered when her boyfriend left in a huff, and married Benny five months later. It all just sort of happened, but from the moment Kathy spotted Benny, she was in this thing.

The thing in question is a combination of the club, which gradually becomes a gang with a wide reach and plenty of allure, and the sense of unity it brings, for riding motorcycles and talking about them and being part of a group where everyone has the others' backs. Everybody in the group is a bit different. Benny is the stoic one. Zipco (Michael Shannon) won't stop mouthing off about his political views. Cockroach (Emory Cohen) got his nickname for his habit of eating bugs—"as a gag," he says, before immediately noting that he also just likes to eat bugs. There are others, of course, but for all their distinctions, they share a love for motorcycles and a steadfast belief that they'll stick up for one another.

All of this just sort of happened, too. The Vandals' leader is Johnny (Tom Hardy), a professional truck driver who split off from a motorcycle racing club after seeing Marlon Brando play a member of a biker gang on TV one day. As the years pass, Johnny becomes respected, powerful, and feared.

Yes, he's tough, but Hardy brings a bit of hesitation—and a cartoony dialect that somehow fits, as if Johnny is aping what he thinks an outlaw biker should sound like—to the role. This isn't necessarily what Johnny wanted, as bikers from Milwaukee and one from California and young local hoodlums want to become Vandals, but he is in it, regardless, and had better be or at least play that part.

Everything about this culture and these characters feels authentic, presumably because Nichols is working with first-hand accounts of a real club from the era, as well as a cast made up of actors who bring a lot of personality to the characters. For all of the attention to those details, though, the story surrounding it is flat and, oddly, lacks any kind of drive.

Part of that is structure, which uses a pair of lengthy interviews, separated by several years, between Kathy and Danny as a haphazard guide. Kathy is simply remembering little anecdotes about the club and its members, explains how her view of the gang changes in the intervening years after it becomes bigger and has to become more forceful to sustain itself, and keeps important details, such as the fates of assorted players, to herself until it comes up in the story. The story of the club's rise in popularity and simultaneous fall from what it initially set out to do is kept at a remove by the framing device, but it's not as if this tale has much to say, beyond the fact that it happened.

Maybe there is some value in that matter-of-fact approach, especially since so much of the story is about becoming so caught up in the day-to-day that the bigger picture isn't recognizable until it's too late. The Bikeriders, though, is so caught up in the minutiae of this culture that the narrative and its ultimate point feel like afterthoughts.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products