During the 1960s, photographer Danny Lyon captured and interviewed members of a motorcycle club. He took out the illustrated book The Bikeriders, published in 1968. Decades later, the work inspired filmmaker Jeff Nichols to create a fiction of the same name, which hits theaters on Friday, after a long postponement and a change of studio attributed to the strikes that paralyzed Hollywood the year last. A superficial ode to the world of bikers, more precisely to the golden age preceding the transition to organized crime, The Bikeriders (Bikers) is suffocated in his “bogus” period reconstructions.
Director among others of Take Shelter, Mud And Midnight Special, Jeff Nichols has meticulously crafted the style of his new film, precise down to the smallest detail, from the female beehive hairstyles, to the cleverly faded settings, including the lighting permanently veiled in cigarette smoke. At first glance, it is very evocative.
The problem is that his scenario is not up to par.
The plot unfolds in several stages, with many and sometimes confusing flashbacks. Intermittently, Nichols features Danny Lyon (played by Mike Faist) interviewing Kathy (Jodie Comer), who tells him about Benny (Austin Butler), her bohemian biker husband, and Johnny (Tom Hardy), the founder of The Vandals club. …
Nichols alternates this metanarrative device which quickly becomes a gimmick, with the points of view of Benny, Johnny, and various members of the Vandals, without a real story developing. We are more in the middle painting: a valid choice, but as it stands, which does not result in a very captivating film. Especially since several developments turn out to be extremely predictable, sometimes predictable (Johnny’s fate), sometimes unsuccessful (the fate of the bullies who beat Benny).
The most annoying element, however, turns out to be the fundamental two-dimensionality of the characters: like the rest of the film, the facade is very well done, but behind it, there is emptiness. This is particularly true of the main role, that of Kathy, the only female character who, in this case, is not really one.
Indeed, this role comes down to a function, each of Kathy’s interventions, each of her lines, having as subject Benny or Johnny. Who is she ? Mystery. His psychology comes down to his immoderate love for Benny. Paradoxically, Jodie Comer delivers a terrific performance. Pronounced Midwestern accent without being caricatured, facial expressions that keep our eyes fixed on her: the considerable talent of the star of the series Killing Eve and the movie The Last Duel (The last duel) almost makes us forget the thinness of the character.
Contradictions and dichotomy
This is not the case for Austin Butler (Elvis, Dune: Part Two/Dune, part two). In the role of Benny, the actor takes a break and multiplies his pouts. The character being a man of few words who is portrayed as an irresistibly charismatic being, Benny should have made us feel his torments, his inner life, so that the swoon he arouses is credible.
Butler and Comer do not share any complicity, even though we should feel the electricity passing between them, again, so that we feel in the room what is described on the screen.
Remains Tom Hardy (Mad Max: Fury Road/Mad Max. The road to chaos), whose customary intensity suits Johnny well, a character who, like that of Kathy, is more or less only defined through his relationship with Benny. Nichols ventures on the trail of homoeroticism, and goes so far as to explain it through the accusatory mouth of Kathy, but the two actors do not follow him on this path.
Which means that we find ourselves, for example, with a scene filmed like the long beginning of an unconsummated kiss between Benny and Johnny, with strong proximity, superposition of faces and whispered words, but which the two actors play by making ignore the subtext. In other words, the game, at all times free from ambiguity by Butler and Hardy, is in contradiction with Nichols’ direction and his script (from which Kathy’s words emanate).
This dichotomy adds to the other weaknesses of a decidedly shaky film. Ah, and show an excerpt from the classic The Wild Onewith Marlon Brando, it was perhaps not champion: The Bikeriders suffers from comparison.