Review: The Bikeriders (2023)

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Like many of Jeff Nichols’ films, save the exceptional Mud and Take Shelter, The Bikeriders is a riveting work moment-to-moment, surprisingly deft with character and tone and humour, but somewhat in search of a dramatic thrust to propel the movie from good to great. The movie operates as a Midwestern, biker gang-version of Goodfellas, with vivid, loose narration from Jodie Comer’s hard-done-by Kathy, wife to the young biker hotshot Benny (Austin Butler). The narrative charts the emergence and transformation of the Chicago-area biker gang, the Vandals, in the late 1960s.

Based on the trailers, you’d be forgiven for thinking the film is a tragic love story about Kathy, the good girl drawn to the bad boy, and Benny, the young man torn between his fidelity to his wife and his mentor, the gang founder, Johnny (Tom Hardy). But that’s not what The Bikeriders is. Rather, it’s an anthropological tour through the past, framed around the interviews given to photojournalist Danny Lyon (played by Mike Faist), who rode with the gang and eventually published a photo-book about their lifestyles. In reality, the gang was the Outlaws Motorcycle Club, which became the third-largest biker gang in the world.

Nichols’ greatest gift as a cinematic storyteller is his attention to time and place and his affection for the hardscrabble people he makes movies about. Thus, The Bikeriders is mostly a parade of minor scenes about the oddballs who join this gang. Watching the cast of eclectic and entertaining supporting actors is much of the fun of the film. Comer, Butler, and Hardy are the central trifecta. Beyond them, there’s Michael Shannon as the wine-swigging weirdo, Zipco, who wants to join the Army to fight in Vietnam despite being too old for enlistment; Boyd Holbrook’s amateur philosopher, Cal, who has seen much of America on the back of a bike; Damon Herriman’s Brucie, the loyal number two to Johnny who would be as at home in a church club as a bike club; Emory Cohen’s well-meaning Cockroach, who wants to go straight and become a motorcycle cop; and Norman Reedus’s vagrant drifter, Funny Sonny, who looks like he drove right out of Easy Rider. Nichols delights in hanging out with these characters, his camera patiently watching their faces, Comer’s affectionate narration highlighting their lovable oddities. The movie is surprisingly hilarious in moments and has the “Dudes Rock” affection for its characters that is also borrowed from Goodfellas.

But simply watching these characters hang out and have fun doesn’t give the film enough juice to propel through all three acts, so when it gets bogged down in some conflict and dramatic confrontations, your interest starts to lag. The main dramatic thrust of the film is the gang’s slide into crime. Johnny isn’t above some petty crimes, but he ultimately sees the Vandals as a community for local outcasts. But the new riders, embodied by Toby Wallace’s dead-eyed The Kid, want the gang to be an outlet for their destructive impulses, not just a place to escape an uncaring society. The wild abandon of the new generation threatens the loyalty and ethics of the old generation, repeating a theme present in every gangster movie from The Godfather to Goodfellas to Donnie Brasco.

The film’s other big question mark is Austin Butler at the film’s centre. Or rather, his lack of being at the centre of the film. Butler is dynamic as Benny, who’s a bit wild, but has his heart in the right place and loves the Vandals and riding more than life itself. But he’s not the lead here, and he always remains something of an enigma to us. He sits mysteriously on bikes as Comer’s Kathy tells us about what makes him tick, but we never spend enough time with Benny to really learn about him first-hand. In the end, Kathy and Johnny are the main characters of the film. Kathy is our narrator and point of view into this world, while Johnny is the Vito Corleone of the film, the old leader whose vision is threatened and whose decisions impact everyone around him. Benny is cast as the Michael Corleone, or the Henry Hill, but he’s not active enough to drive the plot, and his transformation is not the film’s central interest.

Thus, like many of Jeff Nichols’ movies, most notably his two 2016 features Loving and Midnight Special, The Bikeriders never coalesces into a great drama. It’s well-acted, lovingly crafted, but missing a little something to make it more than a good hang.

7 out of 10

The Bikeriders (2023, USA)

Directed by Jeff Nichols; written by Jeff Nichols, based on the photo-book by Danny Lyon; starring Jodie Comer, Austin Butler, Tom Hardy, Michael Shannon, Mike Faist, Boyd Holbrook, Damon Herriman, Beau Knapp, Emory Cohen, Karl Glusman, Toby Wallace, Norman Reedus.

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