The Bikeriders

Directed by: Jeff Nichols
Distributed by: Focus Features

Written by Taylor Baker

72/100

After going through a spell of distribution hell, Jeff Nichols “The Bikeriders” (his first feature film in eight years) has finally been released. The director seemed to be on a hot streak after releasing both “Midnight Special” and “Loving” in 2016. Since then, he’s been in development hell with one particularly long pre-production stint on an “Alien Nation” remake that was canceled shortly before production was set to begin when Disney acquired Fox.

If you’ve seen the marketing campaign for “The Bikeriders,” you, like me, may have thought it was an odd choice to bill Jodie Comer at the front of the posters and other materials while the trailers mostly featured Austin Butler and Tom Hardy. But the film, in some ways feels like a natural follow-up to 2016’s “Loving.” Jodie Comer plays Kathy, a young woman who is wandering through her life and middle-American norms in the 60s when we meet her. One night, she goes to meet a friend at a biker bar and sees Benny, a young, lean biker with cutoff sleeves. The ensuing romance between the two is told in flashback format as she’s interviewed by Danny Lyon (Mike Faist), a college student who hopes to create a book of his collected photographs and recordings of the Vandals Motorcycle Club—the very book on which the film is based.

Austin Butler plays Benny and a returns to a more subdued performance after his bigger turns as Elvis Presley in “Elvis” and Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen in “Dune: Part Two.” Benny’s character is presented rather simply, he is loyal to the Club and to the Club president, Johnny (Tom Hardy). The film is most successful in its larger ensemble scenarios that lead to smaller confrontation and dialogue scenes. It’s Kathy who brings emotionality and a grounding to the film; without her interview sequences and perspective on the events we witness, the film would feel even more like a reenactment.

As the years pass by and men return home from the Vietnam War and join the Chicago Vandals Motorcycle Club and its other chapters, the Club becomes more violent and criminal. It’s less about standing around in a dark bar smoking and drinking all day or riding the road on a chopper and more about hard drugs and violent criminal acts. Much of this happens in the background; we’re presented with this shift in one major party sequence. But it’s flimsy, and you can see the seams of how it’s stitched together plainly. “The Bikeriders” is missing the momentum and naturalism found in Nichols earlier work.

One leaves the film with a sense of the true-life experience of Kathy and some of the parties the Vandals Motorcycle Club threw, but little else. The dramatic scenes play like reenactments, the ensemble doesn’t quite get enough time to breathe and come to life. “The Bikeriders” is good, but it feels like a stifled entry into the filmography of a previously unstifled filmmaker. The film features some gorgeous cinematography and great character work by Jodie Comer. But it isn’t sticky and lacks a grounded emotionality that the film, or at least Jodie’s character Kathy, yearns for. 

“The Bikeriders” Trailer

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