The Bikeriders ~ Review

In Richard Linklater’s latest movie Hit Man, a character postulates that it is possible to change one’s personality if they act “as if.” In other words, if you act like you are the coolest guy in the room…you will become the coolest guy in the room and eventually that will be your personality. While Hit Man presents this as freedom and a way to better yourself, The Bikeriders posits that “freedom” will ultimately spiral out of control and turn into a prison.

Set between the years of 1965 to 1973 writer/director Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders follows the creation and perversion of the Chicago motorcycle group The Vandals, from a fun-loving anarchic motorcycle club to a gang, responsible for gun running, drugs, and prostitution. The film is a fictional story inspired by Dan Lyons’ photojournalist book about the real-life Chicago motorcycle gang The Outlaws.

Jodie Comer plays Kathy – a woman who falls in love with Benny (Austin Butler) the Vandals' hot-headed enforcer. The film plays as a series of interviews bouncing between Danny Lyon (Mike Faist) interviewing Kathy and flashbacks to the various events and the loners, weirdos, and thrill seekers that shaped the Vandals during the 60’s and early 70’s. Johnny (Tom Hardy) is tough as nails, but tender on the inside leader of the group. Second in command Brucie (Damon Herriman) – keeps the peace, while pseudo philosopher Cal (Boyd Holbrook), all-around weirdo Zipco (Michael Shannon), and Funny Sunny (Norman Reedus) among many others form the rest of the group.

Johnny, we learn, founded the group after seeing the Marlon Brando film The Wild One on TV and thought that a motorcycle gang looked cool and fun. As the film progresses, we realize that these are stunted men trapped in a society that gives them no real outlet to express their masculinity. So, they end up riding their motorcycles ridiculously fast, drinking, and fighting each other and other gangs. There’s an early scene where the Vandals and another gang get into a brawl, but it ends with the two groups drinking beers with each other and swapping stories and jokes. These guys are not in it for the violence per se, they are in it for the freedom.

And while all of this is fun, from people looking on the outside the Vandals are either a menace or, the coolest men on planet Earth. This poses problems for the motorcycle club, with the former drawing attention from law enforcement, and the latter attracting literal psychopaths.

Eventually, the Vandals become a self-perpetuating feedback loop of toxic masculinity – with an identity and attitude taken from Marlon Brando leading to violence, aggression, and then becoming a criminal outfit.

The Bikeriders is a good, but not a great film. Its thematic points about the self-fulfilling nature of masculinity leading to eventual destruction (literal or figurative) are interesting and recall other gang (or mob) movies such as Goodfellas, The Wanderers, and Hey Good Lookin’. Ultimately, however, the film makes this thematic point early and then just keeps hammering it over and over again. Particularly in the middle, the film started to lose me and its vignette nature felt overly long and meandering. A tighter and more focused script might have helped keep the movie on track. That said; Jeff Nichols clearly loves these characters and this world. The dialogue feels naturalistic in a way that a lot of these types of movies could either feel forced and in that way, it feels like a movie from the 1970’s.

The cast across the board is fantastic. Tom Hardy wordlessly plays a man who has been staring into the abyss so long that he’s lost all control of what he initially wanted. Austin Butler’s hot-headed Benny wants to be James Dean but comes across like the petulant Val Kilmer character in Heat (if the rumors are true that Butler is going to play Kilmer’s character in Heat 2 – well, it’s perfect casting). Jodie Comer’s work here is wonderfuland you can tell that Kathy’s initial enthusiasm for being part of this wild world has curdled into exasperation and fear. The rest of the cast is a murderer’s row of our current crop of character actors and they all show up playing their roles with humor and heart.

All in all, The Bikeriders is worth your time. A slice of life story about a group of people who stood outside of society's norms, but stood outside for far too long. Maybe you can change your whole identity, The Bikeriders seems to say, but be careful what you wish for.

Two and a half out of Four Stars