Where do men go for a little camaraderie, some fun and companionship while traversing the long and often lonely road of life? They could try a sports bar, or join a bowling league. Or they could become part of a biker gang. The latter option is explored in The Bikeriders (opening June 21). Written and directed by Jiff Nichols, The Bikeriders was inspired by Danny Lyon’s 1967 photo book about the Outlaws Motorcycle Club, the oldest such organization in America. Nichols has named his band of ruffians the Vandals, a Chicagoland group that doesn’t start out as a gang. For a time, anyway, it really was just about enjoying each other’s company.
Our window into this world funnily enough, is not a member of the club. She’s Kathy (Jodie Comer), the girlfriend and later wife of Benny (Austin Butler), laconic right-hand man of the Vandals’ leader, Johnny (Tom Hardy). Kathy narrates the film as she is interviewed about life in the motorcycle scene by Lyon, played by Mike Faist. She’s a charming storyteller: in the role, Comer is bright and chipper and clever, speaking in a quite credible Illinois accent. She winningly tells the story of her romance with Benny, of the Vandals’ founding, and of its gradual mutation into something more sinister.
That endnote gives the film a sadness, a harshness. But otherwise, Nichols has made an amiable hang movie, a testament to a particularly straight-male longing for purpose and connection. Of course, these men would never say that that is the reason they’ve joined the club—no, they just really like motorcycles and beer. But we in the audience see what is actually driving them: the group is an excuse to get ready-made friends without having to express any embarrassing, un-macho needs.
Kathy is impossibly besotted by Benny, and who wouldn’t be? Butler lends the The Bikeriders’s old-fashioned Hollywood glow; he mostly is there to look pouty and beautiful, with a faint haunt in his eyes. Johnny seems pretty smitten too—there are points in the film when one thinks the two men might kiss. Nichols doesn’t really follow that homoerotic suggestion, either because it is not part of the historical record or because that’s not exactly the kind of movie he wants to make. Still, I (for totally upstanding, high-minded reasons) wanted to see that frisson developed a bit more.
Though maybe it’s better as mere diffuse suggestion. The Bikeriders is not aiming to do deep analysis, really. It’s much more of a mood piece; plot is not really front of mind for the film, and Benny’s loner wanderlust is stated but never really understood. This is a project that seems to exist mostly because the creator wanted to noodle around in an environment—a place, a time, a community—that he finds interesting. As is, The Bikeriders plays as if a longer, more robust version disappeared somewhere in the editing room. But a spell is lightly cast nonetheless, enough to make it sting when things start to go sour for Johnny and Benny and the rest.
While the ne’er-do-well newcomers who redefine the ethos of the Vandals are framed as something like villains, Nichols is careful to put at least some of their bad behavior in context. Many of these guys have returned, harrowed and addicted and aimless, from Vietnam. Others are merely poor folks from violent homes, turning to the club for brothers-in-arms support. The older men, who maybe really were just there because they love to ride bikes, watch this shift with weary passivity. Tensions arise, resulting in some terrible things, but Nichols stages them with a sigh of resignation.
Kathy relates that history with a similar “what happened happened” huff. She paints herself as an observer, like us in the audience, someone who had no agency to change the course of much of anything. But she has agency over the film thanks in large part to Comer, who is its most memorable aspect. Sure, the lesson in biker culture is appreciated, but it’s Comer’s flinty and sensible presence that feels like the film’s biggest gift. She has swiftly emerged as one of the great actors of her age, beguilingly natural even when doing a Big Character like Kathy.
Watching Comer in The Bikeriders, one starts to see a glimmer of something Streepian in her, a whirring mind and an innate aptitude for transformation. In a story about men, it’s the woman who rides away with the picture, a burst of vivid life standing out amongst the film’s considered haze of smoke and leather. I’d happily join whatever club she started.
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