Story: THE BIKERIDERS follows the rise of a midwestern motorcycle club, the Vandals. Seen through the lives of its members, the club evolves over the course of a decade from a gathering place for local outsiders into a more sinister gang, threatening the original group’s unique way of life.
What We Thought:
I had been looking forward to The Bikeriders for months ever since its release got pushed back. Starring Jodie Comer, Austin Butler and Tom Hardy and from director Jeff Nichols it seemed like something right up my alley. Once I finally got to see it I couldn’t have been more disappointed. Instead of a fantastic motorcycle gang drama, I got a film that feels like a thousand other movies and TV shows and even worse, it feels like a Martin Scorsese ripoff. (I can’t take credit for that Scorsese line, Martin Lieberman said it after the screening, but it’s such a perfect description I’m borrowing the phrase)
Everything about the film in theory should work. It’s based on a true story about a photographer who toured with the gang taking photos and capturing their story. The story is about a Chicago/midwestern motorcycle gang in its earliest form. So far so good. Along with the cast members I’ve mentioned it also stars Michael Shannon, Norman Reedus and others so the cast is incredible. The biggest issue is that it feels so unoriginal. Nothing about it is groundbreaking nor does it bring anything new to the table. Here are these characters we’ve seen before doing things we’ve seen before, but not nearly as cool as other projects.
I watched Sons of Anarchy and if you have, you’ve seen similar characters to this movie. The difference is with SOA we got action and violence. With The Bikeriders you get very limited action and characters who are overall boring. Austin Butler’s character is the only one really given much, but even it feels like a caricature of a motorcycle gang member. He gets beaten up early on because he won’t take off his patch at a bar which shows how much he cares about his gang. Cool, pretty much done in every season of SOA. Jodie Comer’s character is the girl who falls for the boy from the wrong side of tracks because we’ve never seen that done before. Hell Grease did that decades ago. Even the side characters are all stereotypical of the genre and the youngsters coming up wanting to be members might as well not even have names because they are just stereotypes as well.
A Scorsese knock-off is a good description because Nichols tries to use music the same way Marty does to set the tone of the film. In one scene where a building is on fire you can hear The Staple Singers’ cover of Bob Dylan’s Masters of War playing. Throughout the movie you hear different music of the era and it’s fine, but this is definitely the least Jeff Nichols film of his career.
My biggest takeaway from The Bikeriders was that it was uninspiring. I can see why it got pushed out of awards seasons because it’s a film I will completely forget exists by the end of the year. Comer does an authentic accent, but because no one else is, it drastically stands out especially since she does a lot of the storytelling. Hardy is uneventful and nothing about the film feels refreshing. I walked out unimpressed and pretty much bored with it by film’s end. Maybe if you’ve never seen a motorcycle story before you might find it interesting, but the characters are all losers who don’t accomplish much by the end. A big swing and a miss for me.
The Nerds Templar 