'The Bikeriders' Review: Jeff Nichols' Wannabe Scorsese Drama Lacks Purpose
While The Bikeriders is competently photographed, Jeff Nichols seems too busy riffing on Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas than craft a compelling character drama.
In the opening scene of The Bikeriders, writer/director Jeff Nichols pulls out all the stops to dazzle audiences with his Martin Scorsese pastiche, opening in media res with Benny (Austin Butler) asked to remove his Vandals jacket in a bar by customers. He gets into a tussle with them outside, leading to him being hit by a shovel...until the frame freezes and leads to our title card, cutting to an interview photojournalist Danny Lyon (Mike Faist, pitifully wasted) has with Benny's wife, Kathy (Jodie Comer, with a terrible American accent in a movie filled with terrible American accents), about her time spent with a gang of local 'vandals' who began a motorcycling club and rose up as criminals in the 1960s.
The movie is presented in a fragmented narrative told by Kathy, with the film alternating between two timelines, the '60s, and the '70s, chronicling the rise of the Vandals biker gang through Johnny's (Tom Hardy) iron fist and their fall after Benny gets into an accident and must choose between staying with the gang, or moving away from his life of crime and raising a stable life with Kathy. In classic Scorsese fashion, we have montages, old needle drops, rough violence, gunshots, and copious amounts of voiceover narration. But there's one problem: Nichols isn't Scorsese, and only the man himself can do Scorsese. What we're ultimately left with is a movie that attempts to distract us with its flashy visual style without investing in the character work that will make a picture like this a compelling watch.
The movie's most interesting aspect that explores the rise of a criminal, or at least the shift from 'good' to 'bad,' is to peer through the protagonists' façade and ask why they would resort to such a life. The central question a movie like this should ask is, "Who are these people?" Beyond what they convey to their gang members, who are they really? What should we understand when we get deep into the main character’s psyche? This doesn’t need to be directly conveyed, but usually, how an actor approaches the protagonist will help us understand them.
For Johnny, watching László Benedek's The Wild One on television was his ultimate epiphany, seeing the machismo oozing through Marlon Brando's magisterial performance that made him realize this is who he wants to be. Hardy's portrayal of the character is itself Brando-coded, especially when confronted by members of the gang who want to challenge him ("fists or knives?"), cigarette in mouth, conveying as much coolness as possible without showcasing his innate insecurities, which he likely has. But he, of course, doesn't show it for reasons still unknown as the film progresses.
However, Nichols never explores Johnny's internal and external conflict and prefers to observe him through a surface-level voiceover narration by someone who hasn't spent much time with him or anyone in the Vandals. This singular choice completely sinks most of the character development at play, whether through Johnny's relationship with Benny or how Kathy perceives the Vandals via her interviews with Danny.
The only true glimpse of character work we get is the feeling of freedom Benny has while riding his motorcycle. And when confronted with a choice that could potentially end his connection with the road, Nichols cuts away from the character until its final shot, conveying more about Benny's choice than the entire movie did. Not only is Butler wasted in a one-note performance that goes virtually nowhere, but most of the supporting cast are also retorted to extended cameos that say very little about the gang they're in, whether from Michael Shannon's comically stilted turn as Zipco or The Walking Dead's Norman Reedus showing up with the worst hairdo of the year as Funny Sonny (the name is great, but the relationship he has with the characters isn't even treated compellingly).
It also doesn't help that Hardy and Comer's lead performances aren't very good, with the former channeling his inner Venom to create an accent that completely falters his Brando-like demeanor he conveys within his physicality, whilst Comer's ever-shifting accent adds unintentional comedy for what should be a serious conversation between Kathy and Danny (Faist has nothing to do as the 'external point of view' of the story). There's barely any development in Kathy's relationship with Benny and Johnny, which should be the story's core. However, Nichols frequently drives around in circles (pun absolutely intended) to show the titular Bikeriders at their most evil and violent, with Benny and Johnny living in a morally grey area between repugnant and somewhat human.
Johnny saves Kathy from a near-rape whilst Benny isn't there. Kathy converses with Benny, who scoffs at what happened since Johnny ensured she was out of danger. The movie then cuts to the duo breaking into a house and shooting someone in the leg to threaten them, hammering home the grey area they live in. This is a subject that feels ripe to explore with incredible emotional complexity, but one that Nichols doesn't seem keen on delving deep into and would rather retort to his Scorsese-like aesthetic instead of singularly putting his imprint on a story like this (as he did with Midnight Special and Take Shelter).
But what sets Benny and Johnny apart from the other power-hungry bikers who want to challenge Johnny to the throne (with fists or knives)? We don't know, and Nichols thinks it doesn't matter. He throws in a younger character (expertly played by Toby Wallace) in the second act that wants to destabilize the vandal, but it feels like he belongs in a completely different film than what Nichols has presented us. As a result, The Bikeriders doesn't know what it wants to say about the titular group we spend time with or how it wants to say it. Does it want to fully lean into the Scorsese imitation or become its own animal? At the movie's end, none of what Nichols has shown us amounts to a compelling drama or aesthetic exercise that justifies The Bikeriders from being so superficial and uninterested in anything it puts on screen.