The Bikeriders (2023)
Written and directed by Jeff Nichols
Co-written by Danny Lyon
Full disclosure: I didn’t watch this til the end.
When I saw the initial hype for this last fall, it looked really interesting. I expected a sort of heroic small-town epic, like Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Outsiders” or John Huston’s “Fat City” or even George Lucas’s “American Graffiti.” Something that raised the dirtbag subject matter to the level of legend.
By the time “The Bikeriders” was finally released after a delay of over six months, something changed. There is a designated hero, but no heroics. Austin Butler’s Benny is tall, handsome, and cuts a mean figure in a leather jacket. But even his longtime girlfriend Kathy (Jodie Comer), who provides narration throughout, says that Benny never cries or shows feelings because he doesn’t have any feelings, and in the first hour-fifty and change I didn’t see any evidence to contradict that. There’s only so long you can watch a taciturn man smoke watchfully and then get in life-threatening rumbles, in which he often comes out the loser, before it gets tired. Butler looks great doing all these things, but they add up to nothing.
It’s true that the mise-en-scene — Chicago’s poor neighborhoods and rural environs, circa 1965-70 — is beautifully rendered. And that the motorcycle gang looks impressive in full flight. But they don’t do anything. There aren’t any significant turf battles. There is no story; the whole film hangs on Kathy’s narration to provide missing context, but it doesn’t. Why was this mêlée, which looks like the two rumbles before it, important?
I lost faith in the film’s ability to tie anything together and, like I said, left. It was right around the point where even the members of the bike club seem to be realizing that they are the opposite of cool and powerful, that they are, in reality, pathetic.