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“Goodfellas” romanticized the life of organized crime only to gradually pull the rug out from underneath, and it might seem as if “The Bikeriders” is setting itself up to do the same. Indeed, the movie’s fictionalized version of the Outlaws, rechristened the Vandals, is dreamt up by its founder Johnny Davis (Tom Hardy) while watching the seminal biker movie “The Wild One” (1953) on television, evoking the whole Harley-riding posse as nothing more than a romantic projection. Yet, even as Benny is nominally torn between taking Johnny’s place and truly settling down with his wife Kathy (Jodi Comer), and the Vandals are increasingly infected by dangerous, delusional new members, that fog of romance never fully lifts, as edifying as it undermining. Writer/director Jeff Nichols clearly has such reverence for the best of these men he lets them off with a slap on the wrist.
If “The Bikeriders” is Benny’s story, the one telling it is Kathy, in flash forward scenes where she is interviewed by Danny Lyon (Mike Faist), often in less than glam locales like a laundromat, and recounted in more washed-out cinematographic color. It’s a useful juxtaposition, each cut to the present seeming to throw water on the gauzy past, but it’s also a bothersome one, blunting the film’s flow and often deployed as a kind of crutch. Though sometimes Kathy’s accounts provide colorful detail, they just as often diagnose or explain what the flashbacks fail to live out. What’s more, even if this device seems to suggest a story told from a woman’s point-of-view, “The Bikeriders” remains conspicuously incurious about Kathy herself. Comer’s nasally, bemused, and straightforward Chicago accent is delightful but also sticks out a little too much if only because in many ways, it defines the character more than anything else, unmasking her more as mere emotional antagonist, representing one side of Benny’s conscious, in a manner of speaking.
Not that Benny is much of a character himself. Nichols almost exclusively relies on Butler’s presence. Granted, that presence is substantial, evoked in the comical, captivating sequence where he woos Kathy by essentially doing nothing at all, leaning on his bike outside her house, waiting for her boyfriend to give up and go away, and demonstrating how much Butler holds the camera’s attention whether in long shot or close-up. He reels us in as much as he reels Kathy in. You’d see this sequence and think the guy could have taken Elvis’s place in “Roustabout” if he hadn’t, like, you know, already played Elvis. Butler effuses cool in virtually every scene and yet Benny never quite comes to life. Because there just isn’t much to him, save for a kind of generic outline such a character might possess.
If “The Bikeriders” is Benny’s story, the one telling it is Kathy, in flash forward scenes where she is interviewed by Danny Lyon (Mike Faist), often in less than glam locales like a laundromat, and recounted in more washed-out cinematographic color. It’s a useful juxtaposition, each cut to the present seeming to throw water on the gauzy past, but it’s also a bothersome one, blunting the film’s flow and often deployed as a kind of crutch. Though sometimes Kathy’s accounts provide colorful detail, they just as often diagnose or explain what the flashbacks fail to live out. What’s more, even if this device seems to suggest a story told from a woman’s point-of-view, “The Bikeriders” remains conspicuously incurious about Kathy herself. Comer’s nasally, bemused, and straightforward Chicago accent is delightful but also sticks out a little too much if only because in many ways, it defines the character more than anything else, unmasking her more as mere emotional antagonist, representing one side of Benny’s conscious, in a manner of speaking.
Not that Benny is much of a character himself. Nichols almost exclusively relies on Butler’s presence. Granted, that presence is substantial, evoked in the comical, captivating sequence where he woos Kathy by essentially doing nothing at all, leaning on his bike outside her house, waiting for her boyfriend to give up and go away, and demonstrating how much Butler holds the camera’s attention whether in long shot or close-up. He reels us in as much as he reels Kathy in. You’d see this sequence and think the guy could have taken Elvis’s place in “Roustabout” if he hadn’t, like, you know, already played Elvis. Butler effuses cool in virtually every scene and yet Benny never quite comes to life. Because there just isn’t much to him, save for a kind of generic outline such a character might possess.
Another biker, the Latvian immigrant Zipco (Michael Shannon), gets a brief monologue to explain his slipshod yet sincere ethos that sticks out because of Shannon’s kooky stream-of-conscious delivery but also because it’s the only moment in the movie like it. There is no real weight to these people, meaning that the tragic arc the plot wishes to impress comes across more like going through the motions. Nichols has always been a narrative filmmaker, yet in “The Bikeriders” he proves more lyrical, conveying the most through mood in isolated moments. The rumble of so many motorcycles ineffably envelops the riders in their desired camaraderie while an image of the bikes sliding past so many golden hues of cornstalks at twilight brilliantly captures the ephemerality of their freedom. It’s as ephemeral as “The Bikeriders” itself.
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