The Bikeriders is a crime drama written and directed by him Jeff Nichols, one of my favorite independent filmmakers. This is his sixth feature-length project, so far he has recorded Shotgun Stories (2007), Take Shelter (2011), Mud (2012), Midnight Special (2016) and Loving (2016). The plot of this film was inspired by the photo-book of the same name by Deni Lajon published in 1968 and shows the lives of several members of the Vandals motorcycle club, a fictional version of the Outlaws motorcycle club. The film premiered at the 50th Telluride Film Festival on August 31 last year, and after the Hollywood strike, the rights were acquired from New Regency by Focus Features.
I believe that it is a lot of fun to ride a motorcycle and drink alcohol with your friends until the socializing turns into fights, until the fists in those fights start holding knives and until someone thinks of bringing a gun with them in a knife fight. There is a constant escalation of violence in this story, and the author observes his fictional depiction of this motorcycle group/gang with the passive objectivity of a journalist without any emotions, which in these circumstances and with these characters turned out to be, I must admit, a somewhat boring choice.
The intriguing thing is that Nichols understands and presents sociological details very well. We watch this isolated group of motorcycle enthusiasts go from occasional weekend races in the Chicago area to a group with a certain notoriety and reputation that begins to go beyond the local level. In this process, all participants simply get used to each new step on that ladder, even though none of them expected or particularly wanted to take those steps – when you are “caught in the machine” you don’t even notice it’s happening, until you are somehow the shock doesn’t make you realize it’s too late to do anything about it.
This idea appears quite quickly when our narrator Keti (standard excellent Jodie Comer) telling a story to photographer Danny (Mike Faist) recalls when she first came across Vandale, a small motorcycle club at the time. Among other things, he explains how the view of Beni (Ostin Batler), a young and handsome member of the group, made the whole experience in that dark bar filled with drunken ruffians bearable. Keti left the bar with a stranger, by coincidence he drove her home on a motorbike at four in the morning and she soon married him – from the moment Keti saw Benny, she was spontaneously involved in the club.
All this somehow happened to Johnny too (Tom Hardy), leader of the Vandals. He was a professional truck driver who founded a motorcycle club after seeing Marlon Brando portray a biker gang member on TV one day in The Wild One (1953). As the years pass, Johnny becomes respected, powerful and feared. This isn’t necessarily what he wanted, as Milwaukee bikers and young local hooligans want to become Vandals, but he’s into it and agrees to play the game regardless. Johnny is a tough guy, but Hardy brings a bit of hesitancy to the role, as well as a cartoonish dialect that somehow fits him, as if Johnny is mimicking what he thinks a biker leader should sound like.
The club is primarily attractive because of the sense of unity it brings – for riding motorcycles, for talking about them, as well as the fact that it’s nice to belong to a group where everyone has each other’s backs. Everyone in the group is a little different and despite all their differences they share a love for motorcycles and a firm belief that they will stand up for each other. Everything about this culture and these characters feels authentic, probably because Nichols is working with first-hand accounts of a real club from the era, as well as a cast of actors who bring a lot of personality to the characters. Yet for all that attention to detail, the story is flat and, oddly enough considering it deals with high-powered engines, lacks any narrative drive.
Part of the reason for this is the structure, which uses several random interviews between Kathy and Danny over a period of several years as a basis. Kathy simply remembers little anecdotes about the club and its members, explains how her view of the gang changes over the years, and keeps objectively important details, such as the fates of various characters, to herself until it appears or is revealed in the plot. The concrete story about the rise in popularity of the club, the way it functions and its decline objectively does not have much to say, except for the fact that it all happened once. Perhaps there is some value in that approach to reality, especially since so much of the story is about becoming so caught up in the mundane that the bigger picture can’t be recognized until it’s too late.
The Bikeriders is so preoccupied with the minutiae of this culture that the narrative and its bottom line feel like afterthoughts. There is really nothing to complain about the visual characteristics of the film, but a slightly more cohesive story, a clearly defined protagonist, as well as narrative details that would bring some emotion, tension or answers to questions about the characters’ motives are missing.
my final rating: 7/10
Source: filmskerecenzije.com
