After his well-deserved Oscar nomination for Elvis and starring roles in rollicking adventure mega-blockbusters (both on TV with Masters of the Air and in cinemas with Dune 2), Austin Butler’s meteoric rise hits another target with Jeff Nichols’s The Bikeriders – being enigmatic and hot as hell in a cool mid-budget prestige flick for grown-ups. Playing a renegade biker in ’60s Illinois, he proves himself well-suited to the Easy Rider lifestyle, part of a triptych of goofily magnetic performances in an old-school crime epic that doesn’t live up to its obvious inspirations but has just enough charisma to cruise on by.
Though Butler, as young and hot-headed biker Benny, gets the lion’s share of The Bikeriders’s more obviously ‘iconic’ moments, it’s Jodie Comer who actually takes the lead here as Kathy, a woman dragged into the world of motorcycle riding clubs by her irresistible attraction to, and eventual love for, Benny, a die-hard member of the Vandals club. It’s in this initial courtship, contained within the Goodfellas-pastiching first act, that The Bikeriders is at its best, as Kathy regales to an interviewer (played by Mike Faist and based on Danny Lyon, whose book of biker photography inspired the film) just how she got mixed up with these so-called ‘undesirable characters’.
These are the most effective moments because they allow Nichols to really hone in on his characters, who are compelling and lovable even if they are a little shallow – Butler has screen presence to burn while Comer is having a load of fun with her broad Midwestern accent. Later on, as the ensemble grows, this focus fades, largely for the worse even as the expanded scope does allow for some handsomely mounted set-pieces and some nice ‘hey, it’s *that* guy’ moments. Eventually, it feels as though The Bikeriders is only able to engage with the peripheries of its own story, too distracted to find an emotional core – a problem that makes itself felt heavily when things inevitably come crashing down in the third act.
Covering 1965-1973 in less than two hours, The Bikeriders wears its ‘epic’ status lightly, and there are undoubtedly plenty of simple joys to be found here, from Tom Hardy’s heartfelt but also knowingly silly performance as Johnny, the founder and president of the Vandals, to the, surprisingly uncommon, scenes of bikes screaming across America’s open roads. It’s in Nichols’s obvious love for these machines that he most effectively escapes the Goodfellas shadow, their revs and rumbles adding grit and depth to a soundtrack that is otherwise just relentless ‘60s needle drops.
Some really crunching violence aside, though, the latter half just lacks a bit of punch, too many characters competing for our attention, and there are only so many times you can serve up a montage set to a Shangri-Las song before the technique becomes a bit obvious (similarly, the actual score here doesn’t really work). Inspired as it is by some of the coolest pictures ever taken, The Bikeriders of course looks great, combining rose-tinted nostalgia with rough-and-ready reality for a version of the Sixties that, even with all the blood and mud, it’s hard not to sink in to.
Not quite deep enough to really hit where it hurts, but also not quite purely fun enough to be a thriller, The Bikeriders gets stuck somewhere awkward in the middle. It’s a territory that might prove fatal for other films, but Nichols’s decoration tactic of just plastering enviable jackets and vehicles everywhere, not to mention a panoply of supporting actors with real *faces*, gives the place an irresistibly intoxicating vibe. It might wear off too quickly once you leave, but you’ll enjoy the time you spend in its haze.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 