BIKERIDERS, THE
(director/writer: Jeff Nichols; screenwriter: inspired by the book “The Bikeriders” by Danny Lyon; cinematographer: Adam Stone; editor: Julie Monroe; music: David Wingo; cast: Austin Butler (Benny), Jodie Comer (Kathy), Tom Hardy (Johnny), Michael Shannon (Zipco), Mike Faist (Danny), Toby Wallace (The Kid), Emory Cohen (Cockroach), Norman Reedus (Funny Sonny), Boyd Holbrook (Cal), Beau Knapp (Wahoo), Karl Glusman (Corky), Damon Herriman (Brucie), Happy Anderson (Big Jack), Paul Sparks (Gary, rogue leader), Nathan Neorr (Goodpaster), Will Oldham (Bartender); Runtime: 116; MPAA Rating: R; producers: Arnon Milchon, Sarah Green, Brian Cavanaugh-Jones; Focus Features; 2023)
“The script often skids out of control.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Director/writer Jeff Nichols (“Mud”/”Loving”) was inspired by photojournalist Danny Lyon’s 1968 thin book The Bikeriders, which was on the Chicago Outlaws Motorcycle Club. Nichols matches his cast to the black-and-white photos by Lyon he took of the bikers when riding with them from 1963-1967 (the film is in color). The entertaining biker film is about how a 1960 bike club turned into a Chicago criminal gang called the Vandals (a fictional gang).
Its pledge for brotherhood and its stupid violence sets the gang’s tone.
Kathy (Jodie Comer), a working-class gal from Chicago, narrates. She meets in the Vandals hangout the moody and elusive Benny (Austin Butler), a hotshot Vandals biker, who gets into lots of brawls and in trouble with the law. His mentor is the aging biker Johnny (Tom Hardy), the truck driver, family man, and leader of the Vandals (inspired by Brando’s the Wild One-1953). Kathy falls for Benny, who courts her by looking cool in his Vandals jacket, and they marry.
The film is framed around Kathy telling anecdotes of the colorful Vandals to Danny Lyon (Mike Faist) in 1965. He’s recording her stories for a planned book on photos of the bikers. She covers the gang from the mid–’60s to the ’70s. Other Vandals of note are the off-the-wall Zipco (Michael Shannon), the mechanic Cal (Boyd Holbrook), the loyal lieutenant Brucie (Damon Herriman), the reliable footsoldier Wahoo (Beau Knapp), the carefree bug eater Cockroach (Emory Cohen), the fierce looking Funny Sonny (Norman Reedus), and the reliable footsoldier Corky (Karl Glusman).
The Bikeriders fills us in on how the bike gangs of the fifties and sixties got into organized crime, even if that wasn’t their intention. The acting by Austin Butler and Tom Hardy might pass for a modern-day version of James Dean and Marlon Brando on choppers.
This glossy history of biker gangs movie only takes a superficial nosedive into its subject. The gist of it has Kathy trying to get Benny more interested in her than in Johnny and the gang. I can’t say the biker film took me to thrilling places, as the script often skids out of control and the vacuous biker world left little for me to muse about. But I still found the visuals and characters fascinating, and how the bikers come to life on week-ends when not working their day jobs blew me away.
It played at the Telluride Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 6/20/2024 GRADE: B-