While it shows glimpses of the great movie it could have been, Jeff Nichols’ “The Bikeriders” comes off as a collection of the best mob movie moments you can remember under the guise of a motorcycle gang’s movements.
The film, based on the book by Danny Lyon, is set in Chicago in the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s. Though we don’t know how Lyon came to ride with the Vandals biker group and photograph and interview their members, he’s played in the film by Mike Faist (“Challengers”) and it’s his interview with Kathy (Jodie Comer) that sets the story for the film. Kathy, wife to Vandals member Benny (Austin Butler), provides the voice-over narration to her story of fighting with Vandals leader Johnny (Tom Hardy) and the biker club collective against the hold they have over her husband.
Of course, Kathy getting Benny out of the Vandals gang’s grip won’t be easy as we learn from the opening scene. Dressed in a denim Vandals vest, Benny drinks alone at a bar and is harassed by a couple of bar regulars for wearing bike club ‘colors.’ The regulars take Benny outside to brawl and, while the regulars take their lumps, Benny gets the brunt of the battery. Later we learn, as Elton sang, Benny’s a renegade- bikers don’t wear their colors when they’re alone (strength in numbers or closeted cowardice). When Johnny and the Vandals go to the bar after Benny’s hospitalized, they get the assailants’ information from the bar’s owner who doesn’t want trouble but gets it anyway. As a sign to prospective opponents or just the power play you’d expect from punks, the Vandals burn the bar to the ground.
I don’t know if it’s stereotypical that all gangs have similar mob mentalities, but “The Bikeriders” employs stereotypes we’ve seen and shows it in a style influenced by easily identifiable mob movies. Comer as Kathy, neatly pulling off a Midwestern accented in a fast-talking staccato, is too similar to Lorraine Bracco’s excitable Karen in “Goodfellas” and even the scene where Kathy sees Benny for the first time is shown using Scorsese’s slow camera dolly style to a sixties-song soundtrack. Tom Hardy as Johnny comes off like a combo of Paul Sorvino’s slow-moving, silent leader Paulie in “Goodfellas” mixed with the succinctly-speaking Chazz Palminteri’s Sonny in “A Bronx Tale.” Even the clash between the older hard-drinking bikers and the younger drug-addled gentry illustrated by Johnny’s run-in with an eager Vandals club candidate (Toby Wallace) reminds us of the Carlito/Benny Blanco conflict in “Carlito’s Way.”
Where “Bikeriders” gets it right is in smaller moments: Vandals member Zipco (Michael Shannon) explaining how he wanted to fight for his country in Vietnam but his patriotism was squashed because of his appearance; the Vandals being told not to show their sympathies at the funeral of a fallen member at the family’s request but show up anyway. While Nichols employed acute character insight like this in his films “Take Shelter” or “Mud,” it seems lacking here.
Had “The Bikeriders” shown more of the social stigma attached to being a member of the Vandals gang through the eyes of Danny Lyon (like “An Interview with the Vampire” meets “Colors”), it might have made a better impact.