No matter what, even the most scowling, masculine brute needs a sense of belonging to get them through this unfeasibly random shit show we call life. That seems to be the central thrust of Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders, a movie that attempts to offer a glimpse of a 1960s outlaw motorcycle club while loosely adapting Danny Lyon’s photo book of the same name.
However, it hasn’t exactly been a smooth ride to the screen for this movie with the threat of going straight to streaming looming after a delay of release thanks to the actor’s strike in Hollywood. So does this tale of Goodfellas on bikes that features a trio of powerhouse leads and a whole clutch of suitably grizzled character actors justify its delayed pit stop on the way to cinemas?
Well, judging by how much my seats shook every time someone gunned their cycle into life – yeah; but there’s much more to it than that…
Photojournalist Danny Lyons plans to compiles a book from a string of interviews about a motorcycle club that goes by the name of the Vandals and his main source of inside information about the comings and goings of its founding members comes from Kathy, a young woman who found herself in the middle of things after falling for absurdly handsome bad boy, Benny Cross who first hooks her in by unironically fixing her with a knee-tremblingly look from across a pool table that would floor Dr. Smolder Bravestone. Within five weeks, the pair is married and before you know it, Kathy is rubbing shoulders with the other members of the gang. Leading things is the founder of the Vandals, Johnny, a mean, but honorable trucker and following him are a colourful array of misfits and outcasts who are unified by their love of motorcycles, their distrust of normal conventions and an unspoken need to belong.
However, tensions soon arise between Johnny and Kathy when Benny’s almost superhuman love for the gang gets him brutally roughed up when he wears his gang colours in a regular bar. But after Johnny flexes his muscles in order to get justice, a tug-of-war begins as Kathy tries to get him to quit the gang and riding because of his injury, while Johnny tries to make him his successor for leading a gang that is seeing new chapters pop up in every single state.
Of course, if there is one thing the enigmatic Benny hates more than squares or rules, it’s responsibility being heaped on his too-cool-for-school back – I mean, he’d die for the Vandals, but it turns out that also he’d also rather die than lead them. But as the Vandals gets too big for even Johnny to keep tabs on, an “undesirable element” soon slowly creeps into was once was a gang of motorcycle enthusiasts and slowly adds a criminal element.
Popular media almost invariably casts the same light on biker gangs whenever it rears its leather jacketed visage; been it the lauded Sons Of Anarchy on TV to a whole bunch of downloadable content for Grand Theft Auto that saw you undertake missions for a gang known as the Lost. Hell, even Lance Henriksen once played the psychotic head of a biker Chapter in the Brian Bosworth action flick, Stone Cold – and so the list goes on. However, while the Vandals motorcycle club did, invariably, transform into something of a criminal enterprise, Nichols is obviously here to focus more on what the club was, rather than stroke the scroat of any viewer who simply has turned up for some Scorsese-esque crime shenanigans. No, this is more of a film that deals more with the motley characters who would become so devoted to the group that would finally accept them.
Much like those oily, scruffy hog riders (steady now), The Bikeriders proves to have a greatly endearing personality that’s loaded with flaws. For a start, all of the three leads often feel a little like they’re all in different types of movie with Jodie Comer’s Kathy, looking and sounding like she’s abour to launch into a rendition of “Leader Of The Pack” at any minute, is obviously in a Lorraine Bracco/Goodfellas predicament as she falls for a guy with serious ties to an abnormal way of life. Similarly, Tom Hardy’s Johnny seems like he’s going to take the role of De Niro’s Jimmy Conway, but instead shifts gears into a far more benevolent, Brando obsessed type of role, who has genuine, good intentions but who can’t help the slide into chaos that was due to hit. And then there’s Austin Butler, who plays the latest in a line of gorgeous enigmas as a brooding, James Dean type without any hint of irony or restraint at all – and I’ll say this, it’s a damn good job that cinemas are now all into digital projection these days, because Butler smolders at such a ridiculous intensity, he’d surely melt celluloid right out of the projector.
However, in a smart attempt to avoid the film feeling like a one-sided sausage fest with bee-hive wearing women looking in from the inside, the film smartly makes the jabbering Kathy the narrator making her central to the story. This probably can account for why Butler’s portrayal almost feels like parody at times (we’re literally introduced to him brooding cinematically over a pool table), but it doesn’t stop the film from revving its most obvious benefit to the absolute limit – those performances. With both Comer, Hardy and Butler all known for giving tic-laced, accent driven performances sometimes I swear it takes at least ten full seconds on during any given scene for any one of the three leads to actually meet the gaze of whomever they are speaking to, when when they do, they inhabit their roles with a sense of urgency.
This is match by the nicely familiar supporting cast, who get to nicely stretch their acting legs while sporting crazy hair, straggley beards, yellow teeth or, in Norman Reedus’ case, all three and Michael Shannon, Boyd Holbrook and Damon Herriman all look to be having tremendous fun bring their various, factual, oddballs to life. However, anyone expecting a full on crime hit may be constantly exasperated with all the bitter monologues and vaguely homoerotic vibes that pulse between Johnny and Benny (I swear that the breathy bit where the former tries to enlist the latter to be his replacement while they stand mere centimetres apart is shot like a love scene…). However, those who are here to get a snapshot of a certain way of life before it got twisted and corrupted all to hell, will be well served by Nichols’ love letter to a cluster of men who simply refuse to follow life’s rules, and yet are bizarrely willing to die for their own – no matter how strange to the squares they may be.
Much like the bedraggled dropouts that populate its world, The Bikeriders is messy, exceedingly rough around the edges and frequently confounding, but as a heartfelt, misty-eyed, acting showcase, the film urges you to not give a fuck about established rules and just enjoy the ride.
🌟🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 