Drawing deeply from Danny Lyon’s 1968 book of photographs and interviews chronicling a Chicago motorcycle club, writer-director Jeff Nichols fashions a film that is part anthropological study and part gangster drama. It’s stronger as the former, anchored by scenes of a Lyon stand-in (Mike Faist) interviewing Kathy (Jodie Comer), the wife of the club’s purest soul: a mythologically cool outsider willing to be part of a group (and marriage) as long as neither reins him in in any way. Austin Butler (Elvis himself) has the role of Benny and he does what he can with a part that is intentionally vacuous. Comer—once you adjust to her Character accent work—gives a more fully realized portrayal of a woman both enchanted and disillusioned with the boys’ club that’s come to define her life. Tom Hardy, meanwhile, has fun aping Marlon Brando in The Wild One (which is directly referenced here) as the club’s leader, a truck driver by day who indulges his more primal tendencies on a bike at night. The Bikeriders is at once in line with the other interrogations of masculinity that you’ll find in Nichols’ filmography (Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter), while also somewhat lacking in that department. As the narrator, Comer’s Kathy inherently provides an outside perspective, but mostly she seems bemused. What’s missing, in comparison to Nichols’ other movies, is an internalized angst.
(6/20/2024)
