‘The Bikeriders’ tells an above-average biker history
The period piece about a motorcycle club’s fall is well-presented and acted, but doesn’t have much to say.
Sons of Anarchy was a popular cable show that ran for seven seasons. It told the story of a modern-day outlaw motorcycle club. While set in the present day, the series frequently referred back to the club's origins in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.
The Sons, as established by the series, got their start as a group of recently returned Vietnam veterans, some of whom were about brotherly companionship, but others who were more interested in making the motorcycle club into more of a full-on outlaw criminal organization. The dispute ended in a murder that continued to have reverberations by the time of the events of the main series.
During the show’s run, there were sometimes rumors that a prequel spinoff about the “First Nine” was in the works. That never happened, but the new film The Bikeriders dramatizes something similar.
Directed by Jeff Nichols, a specialist in heartland Americana (Take Shelter, Mud, Midnight Special, and Loving), The Bikeriders is well-acted and looks fantastic. Whether it has anything of much to say is another question.
The Bikeriders has a literary pedigree, although it adapts it loosely. It comes from a photo book, also called The Bikeriders, published in 1967 by photojournalist Danny Lyon. Lyon photographed the Outlaws Motorcycle Club in their original chapter in McCook, a suburb of Chicago that looks much more like a small town. Mike Faist (from Challengers and West Side Story) plays Lyon, although he mostly holds a tape recorder.
The club is led by Johnny (Tom Hardy) and Benny (Austin Butler), although the story is mostly told through the latter’s girlfriend, Kathy (Jodie Comer, a fancy British actress who convincingly plays a working-class Midwestern woman).
A long list of actors (Nichols perennial Michael Shannon, along with Norman Reedus, Boyd Holbrook, Beau Knapp, Karl Glusman, and Damon “Dewey Crowe” Herriman) get to play colorful characters in this town where it appears all the bikers gather in weekends and have big elaborate picnics.
Also, the film seems to care about both the motorcycles and whether or not the bikers are good at riding them, which is something that Sons of Anarchy pointedly never touched.
We’re gradually told how the club collapsed, although the film sort of bungles this part, not depicting a convincing rise-and-fall arc. After all, a scene in which Kathy is nearly sexually assaulted is treated as a pivotal moment- even though, in the first scene of the movie, we’ve already seen the same character repeatedly groped by several members of the earlier version of the club.
The Bikeriders has had an odd path to the screen. Shot in late 2022, it premiered last August at the Telluride Film Festival. It was picked up by Disney’s 20th Century Studios and set for release in December, and posters were up for it in theaters. But then Disney, during the strikes, decided to drop the film. Focus Features picked it up and scheduled it for June, six months after its original release date.
Overall, the film is above average but probably didn’t warrant an awards season release.