It was a bold choice to make a woman the primary narrator of THE BIKERIDERS. Based on the photo book of the same name, and the interviews within it by Danny Lyon, it details the rise of the Vandals biker club in 1950s Chicago and takes us through its golden era that lasted until the early 1970s. The hypermasculine culture, full of posturing, brawling, and beer, had no room for women except as accessories, and choosing Kathy (Jodie Comer), the wife of one of the original bikers, Benny (Austin Butler), affords us an outsiders view of an all-consuming obsession with motorcycles and the camaraderie of others equally obsessed. It seems to be saying to us that while we might observe, we will always be, male or female, outsiders to this gang of eccentrics and misfits who found a place of acceptance, even celebration, among themselves and didn’t give a damn about what the rest of the world thought.
Not that this was an easy life. The first scene shows us Benny, solitary at a bar, preferring a beat-down to removing the gang colors. Narrating it is Kathy, who introduces us to her husband as the blood flows by telling us his propensity for getting into trouble. In this case, a shovel to the head, other times outrunning cops until his bike runs out of gas. In neither case does he break a cool that rivals that of Steve McQueen. Seriously.
Why would a respectable girl fall for a biker? Certainly, the introduction to Benny’s peers leaves her with handprints on her white jeans from being groped, but when she first catches sight of Benny across the crowded dive bar where the club hangs out, leaning on a pool table and bathed in an aethereal glow, the stunning looks and effortless cool proves irresistible. Benny is similarly smitten, and sets about courting her despite her live-in boyfriend, and succeeds not with words, but with an all-night vigil, leaning on his motorcycle, chain-smoking until dawn.
We are immersed in a world of motorcycle maintenance, racing, conversation, and the sort of sparring that comes with too much alcohol consumed by people who carry a chip on their shoulders. Images and words create a mosaic, with members of the club talking about themselves and each other. The effect is like leafing through the book on which the film is based, stumbling over counter-intuitive nuggets of information that challenge our notions of what motorcycle clubs are like. The main narrative, though, is from Kathy, and it is through her we meet the founder of the Vandals, Johhny (Tom Hardy doing his best Marlon Brando). He is also the keeper of the peace, such as it is, assuring Kathy in her soon-to-be handprinted white jeans meeting the club for the first time that no one will really hurt her. The idea of forming a club was his after watching THE WILD ONE starring Brando, and the gradual change from guys who like to hang out with other guys who like motorcycles into a gang whose violence gives even the local police pause, sneaks up on all of them until the 1970s bring in a younger crowd who prefer pot to beer, and shows the original bikers was vengeance really means.
The interlocutor for Kathy and the others is Danny (Mike Faist), a college student who has been chronicling the lives of the Vandals. How that came about it not addressed, though how he convinced the gang, and their women, to talk to him so openly would have been interesting to discover. He pops up in their lives with his camera and his tape-recorder, gathers information, takes a few pics, and is gone again. The flashbacks with which the story is told are from different periods in Kathy’s life, making for a wobbly narrative. Necessarily episodic as it winds its way through the years, it also fails to make of the gang a cohesive whole. Other members of the club tell their individual stories, without flashbacks, which establish who they are as they recreate stills form the book, but the focus is on Kathy, Benny, and Johnny. While there is an effort to make an emotional triangle out of the push and pull of Kathy’s need for normalcy, and the ersatz father-son bond Benny and Johnny have established, there is a failure to build on that relationship, thereby failing to create the tension necessary for that to be a true competition. Also weakening the triangle is the fact that women in this world were expected to be quiet and know their place. And Kathy, though she chafes, does just that. She is reduced to rattling a cocktail shaker at one point to drown out Johnny, and she stops when given a look by him.
The performances are suitably vivid, which makes up for how some characters are underwritten. Comer, all big eyes, Chicago accent, and beehive hairdos, evokes the latent wild streak that makes hopping onto Benny’s bike inevitable. Butler moves with effortless assurance and wears the high hair with conviction. He gives Benny a wild streak that is anything but latent, but also sprung from the need to have a good time, even if it means that ci-mentioned shovel to the head. As for Hardy, Brando impression and all, he comes across as a gentle giant, no wild streak, no pleasure in burning down a bar that dissed a club member. He could almost be termed a, gasp, bureaucrat. More satisfying Norman Reedus as the California biker with bad teeth and an upbeat disposition, and Michael Shannon as a transplanted wild-haired Hungarian kvetching about pinkos and bewailing his rejection by the military. Shannon, longtime collaborator with writer/director Jeff Nichols, conveys more with a grunt and a vacant stare at the camera than others do with paragraphs of dialogue.
THE BIKERIDERS is a beautifully directed film with touches worthy of an epic. Nichols creates the texture of life in the club with an immersive experience that puts us in the middle of a fight for dominance, a party going off the rails, or the intoxicating freedom of a ride on open road with the entire club that extends to each side of the blacktop. In the midst of this, though, and even in the most testosterone-fueled moments, he reveals the lost little boys beneath the tough veneer. More, he reveals how that lost feeling is at the heart of the hyper-machismo on display. It is a not inconsiderable feat, and one that deserves our admiration.
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