Verdict
Summary
While the performances and the casting (especially the peripheral characters, played by some excellent character actors, including Michael Shannon and Norman Reedus, among others) are all top notch, the movie suffers a bit in the structure.
Plot:
An early motorcycle-riding club flourishes and becomes a gang.
Review:
A bunch of motorcycle enthusiasts band together in Chicago in the mid ’60s and form a club called The Vandals. Their leader is the stalwart, masculine Johnny (Tom Hardy) who takes his cues from Marlon Brando’s performance and persona in The Wild One, and he surrounds himself with a clan of like-minded friends and confidants, their club growing in size and becoming a presence on the streets that even the police fear and tread carefully around. At this point, The Vandals haven’t crossed the line yet into criminality, but it’s the way they carry themselves and behave that garner the fear and respect of the police and the society around them. When a handsome young bike rider named Benny (Austin Butler) joins the club by simply riding around with them, he gets Johnny’s respect with his casual cool demeanor and becomes an integral component to The Vandals’ image and how the club’s reputation is eventually solidified. Benny takes up a steady girlfriend, a working class woman named Kathy (Jodie Comer) who resists him at first, but she soon takes up with The Vandals and their almost circus-like existence, riding with Benny and going with him wherever the club goes, and it is through her eyes that the story is told. A journalist / photographer named Danny (Mike Faist) tags along with Kathy and The Vandals, asking questions and taking photos over a long period of time, formulating what will eventually become a book that would be the basis for this movie. Kathy experiences the gradual growth of the club as it changes into a gang; the pressure for the club to expand into new chapters around the country forces Johnny to adjust by inducting more and more strangers into the fold, putting the entire enterprise into jeopardy as the gang goes national, thus putting his leadership into question as the gang must cope with other chapters’ forays into crime and fighting other gangs for supremacy. When Johnny foresees his downfall, he chooses Benny to be his successor, but Benny walks away from The Vandals (and from Kathy), which leaves The Vandals vulnerable from the newbies and would-be’s to attack and take over the gang, turning it into a force to be reckoned with.
Written and directed by Jeff Nichols, The Bikeriders was a little deceptively marketed to make it seem like a straightforward film with a structure that you’d expect, but the film itself almost resembles a documentary the way it features a sort of Q & A interview type approach to telling its story. It’s a little jarring to have the whole film told from the point of view of Kathy’s perspective, which doesn’t really serve the movie or the audience the way I was hoping it would. It’s a weird way to tell the story, and while the performances and the casting (especially the peripheral characters, played by some excellent character actors, including Michael Shannon and Norman Reedus, among others) are all top notch, the movie suffers a bit in the structure. It’s a very well made and produced film, though, and it’ll eventually find its audience on home video after its disappointing box office performance.
Universal’s Blu-ray edition comes with a digital code as well as exclusive bonus content, including a feature commentary by director Nichols, as well as a number of bonus features, including “Johnny, Benny, & Kathy,” “The Era of The Bikeriders,” and more. It’s also streaming on Peacock.
