Luscious lips and tight leather can’t redeem this uneven, safe-playing biker biopic

Any true biker worth his or her salt would no doubt believe in the age-old adage of not revealing all your cards too soon.  It’s ironic then that Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders, based on Danny Lyon’s “new journalist” photo-book of the same name, fails to adhere to such wisdom — or is a subconscious reveal of the live-fast-die-young approach to life biker culture is typically known for.

A refreshing cast, Jodie Comer, Austin Butler and Tom Hardy excel as the real-life the real-life equivalents of couple Kathy and Benny Bauer, and the colourful ring-leader of 1960s motorcycle club the Vandals, Johnny Davis. Documenting the years that defined the Vandals’ rapid ascension to become the third largest motorcycle club in America — a status its real-life counterpart, the Outlaws club, still enjoys today — the movie follows the trio as they vie for control over lovable but dogged Benny. While the sensible, self-admittedly out-of-place Kathy (and present-day narrator) yearns for normalcy and a life free from biker danger for the pair, Johnny, seeing in ride-or-die Benny a second-in-line to the club throne, ever seeks to win him over as his protege.

While certainly worth a watch, however, The Bikeriders never lives up its seductive, “kickstart” first act, and misses key tricks needed to assert itself as a worthy addition to the mob and crime oeuvre in 2024. Indeed, much its top cards are played (and played well, it must be said) within the first 20 minutes or so alone of the movie, jinxing the remainder of what is in fact a rather staid story. 

Beginning with a bang, Nichols seeks familiar ground as with a raucous injection of Scorsesian momentum, tactfully — if rather cheaply — borrowing from the master of mob/gangster/Wall-Street-felon epics himself. All the tropes of a boisterous period Scorsese are there, only redeployed to depict the happening world of a 1960s motorcycle gang on the cusp of making it big. Accompanying the perky, future/present-day Kathy — well initiated in the biker world — can be seen the tell-tale ingredients of a fetishistic rock’n’roll romp:  horny, bad-boy-meets-good-girl Grease-lightening thrills; vintage Dr. Peppers chugged back by ladies in snug Levis; and enough beer and cigarettes to sink a ship — all conveyed through sweeping, hypnotic camera work that puts viewers at the heart of action you can’t help but want to be a part of. 

Not convinced?  Rest assured that the movie’s back-to-back soundtrack, leaping frenziedly from one track to another à la GoodFellas, provides enough giddy panache to put just about anyone in the mood to groove. 

Queue Austin Butler as the brooding stud Benny Bauer, whose James Dean charm and good looks quickly catch the doubtful Kathy off guard when she spots him across the bar.  Leaving the joint, however, Benny follows her out, only for the revved-up biker bar-goers to coax her into hitching a ride on his chopper.  Together, they enact a litmus-test of biker romance, cruising down highways in a ritual plucked straight from Lana del Rey’s born-to-die, by-gone Americana playbook of the 2010s.  And as if this weren’t enough, taking her home, he sets up camp outside in an old-school campaign to rid her of her blue-collar beau.  Of course, he’s successful, and just like that, Kathy is a biker girl.

And yet, a testimony to the film’s unevenness, we’re not afforded the opportunity to witness this transition, only seeing her switch from simple midwestern woman to well-initiated, danger-fearing biker wife.  We in fact rarely see the pair together for the remainder of the film, sacrilegiously canceling their credibility a couple (for what is a biker romp without a believable romance we can follow?). 

This results in Kathy’s present-day, authoritative self (much too au fait with biker ways and customs) jarring awkwardly with the near-mute wallflower she is throughout the bulk of the film.  This is a real shame, for Comer, who, against all odds, steals the show as the more cocksure married-to-the-bob version of Kathy. Following in the footsteps of David O. Russell’s 2013 American Hustle — in which stars Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams are afforded the screen time and narrative weight in order to provide a fascinating glimpse into the complex roles women played in a niche, often dangerous subculture — would have gone a long way here. 

Like Kathy’s characterisation, anything beyond The Bikeriders’ show-stopping first act seems to peter off, including the actual storyline itself.  Not much really happens, save for the occasional gruesome bust-up (think shovels being driven into ankles) or the existentially menacing presence of younger, more forthright bikers who want a piece of the rapidly growing biker clan.  Even the group’s expansion — with “chapters” supposedly cropping up across America — lacks conviction.  Ultimately, where the film’s opening scenes promise a confident arsenal of tricks and smooth storytelling, for the remainder we’re merely waiting for the action to happen.

Perhaps The Bikeriders’ biggest faux pas was remaining too close to its source material, resulting in a rather confused, staid biopic.  It’s a film which on the one hand replicates the seductive and self-aware brazenness of Wolf of Wall Street, and on the other, reverts back to its photobook origins for inspiration — finding there only the gritty, striking stills which defined the work.  Then again, maybe there’s not that much to be said about the Vandals or their real-life counterpart The Outlaws Motorcycle Club.  But I find that hard to believe.  An American subculture whose customs and aesthetics are recognised and appreciated the world over, the genesis of America’s third largest motorcycle club is ripe for the picking.

Of course, the crime and underworld genre is itself undergoing a crisis of identity of sorts, and The Bikeriders is perhaps symptomatic of this.  Today, there’s little room for gung-ho, macho mob movies, owing to the widespread hunger for more sexually ambiguous, trend-setting Zeitgeists like Call Me by Your Name, The Power of the Dog, and the divisive duo that is Saltburn and Challengers.  

Younger viewers want and expect more nuanced, subversive takes on sexuality, gender roles and power — the surface of which is barely scratched in The Bikeriders. 

The homoerotic tensions which bind Benny and Johnny, for instance, are left unexplored, if merely nodded at through queer-baiting motifs.  The prevalence of the pair’s impossibly large lips, for instance,  accentuated on-screen via a playful use of cigarettes, certainly unite the pair in a Hyacinth/Apollo-like dynamic.  Ever seeking to win Benny over from Kathy (and have him all to himself), this dynamic comes to head when Johnny, later in the film, attempts to poach him from the marital hold with the prospect of being next in-line as Vandals chief.  Leaning in as if to kiss him, Johnny speaks sotto voce so that the crunching sounds of his Clone-esque, taught leather jacket accompany the sweet nothings he whispers into his ear in an intimate starlit moment between the pair (one the off-kilter Hardy excels at). 

Ultimately, all the right ingredients are there for an unconventional, box-office biker raunch, an aesthetic begging to replace — or indeed reinvent — the now-tired outlaw epic.  But in seeking to tick all the boxes, The Bikeriders ends up being nothing, to the tragic detriment of a daring, almost-there cast which Hardy naturally dominates. ∎