Review: Jeff Nichols Comes Roaring Back to Cinemas with “The Bikeriders”

By Jacob Jones

The Bikeriders was written and directed by Jeff Nichols, and is based on the 1967 photobook of the same name. It takes place between 1965 and 1973, as Kathy (Jodie Comer) recounts the early days of the Outlaws MC (or the Vandals) – an old-school biker club from the streets of McCook, Illinois – to Danny Lyons (Mike Faist), who would go on to eventually author said photobook. From her first day, meeting Benny (Austin Butler) and Johnny (Tom Hardy), to her marriage to Benny, to club picnics and rides across the American Midwest, to meeting members of other clubs, to the introduction of new members of the crew and the departures of longstanding friends, to the eventual evolution of the club into a proper gang, Kathy helps Danny to assemble a portrait of an American society which has since faded into relative obscurity, and hopefully, give their legacy one last good ride. The film also stars Emory Cohen, Boyd Holdbrook, Damon Harriman, Michael Shannon, and Nordman Reedus.  
 
It’s been nine years since writer and director Jeff Nichols last released a feature film, and the movie world as a whole has felt his absence. Since Loving was released in 2016 to very little fanfare (which it ultimately deserved to have), few filmmakers have been able to replicate or even approximate what Nichols brought to the table as an artist. Here was one of the few filmmakers left making mid-budget films for adults that were centered around movie stars but didn’t seem to be especially interested in whatever awards contention they could possibly be slated for along the way – the kinds of movies summers and falls were chock-full of and used to be built around. (Midnight Special is the sci-fi exception.) There are still a select few who do this kind of work – hell, Richard Linklater, who released Hit Man this year – is one of them, but they’re becoming fewer and fewer as studios seem increasingly to only be interested in pushing large-budget projects for large box office returns. (Disney even ultimately let this movie go after removing it from the schedule following the SAG-AFTRA strike of last summer; originally produced under the 20th Century Studios banner, the film is now distributed under Focus Features, one of the few major studios left that seems genuinely interested in these kinds of projects beyond their awards prospects.) Now, Nichols has returned to the silver screen to deliver not only one of the best movie of the year, but exactly the kind of film that movie fans like me have been craving to return to theaters for a long time.
 
There will be inevitable comparisons to Goodfellas based on the earlier stylization of The Bikeriders, especially in the first act, and they wouldn’t be unfair comparisons, generally speaking. The overall edit and – to put it simply – “vibe” of the film feels very much like the Scorsese epic of 1990, complete with freeze-frame title cards, voice-over narration, and a soundtrack reminiscent of the time in which the film takes place. But Nichols is no Scorsese (who are we kidding, no one is), so as much as the film initially attempts to replicate or otherwise embody those stylistic choices, it can’t stop itself from moving too fast at points, which ends up leaving the first act as a whole somewhat of a mess; not one that can’t be cleaned up, and it’s only a spill really, but somewhat of a mess, nonetheless. That said, the film does eventually settle into its own groove, a thoroughly masculine endeavor of honor, legacy, loyalty, brotherhood, etc, without ever feeling as though it’s obsessed with the masculinity it offers. And who better to carry that cool masculinity than one of the biggest movie stars of the moment, Austin Butler.
 
The Bikeriders has other stars doing good performance work – Jodie Comer in particular is quite underrated here as she gets to be the emotional core of the film – and of course there’s a bit of bizarre vocal experimentation (we will never know what Tom Hardy truly sounds like and while Comer’s accent does eventually stop being as distracting, it takes a minute for it to get there), but none of them come close to replicating the true “movie star” power that Austin Butler has in holding the camera’s gaze. He has a presence on screen that’s difficult to quantity exactly, but can only remind the viewer of someone like a Brad Pitt or Robert Redford to Glen Powell’s Clooney or Paul Newman. Audiences may see the film for all sorts of reasons, whether they’re Jeff Nichols fans, Tom Hardy fans, Mike Faist fans, or otherwise, but they’ll leave talking about Austin Butler. It’s his effortless cool that lets the engine of the movie come roaring to life, and it’s his scenes in the movie that keep it from losing focus too often to recover.
 
All that said, this isn’t a perfect movie, and just as the first act feels a little bit too fast for all the stylization it offers, the third act is perhaps a little bit too slow and lacking in some much-needed stylistic adrenaline. That’s not to say the ending isn’t good – that’s in safe hands – but from the break into act three almost until the ending itself, the film sort of feels like it doesn’t know how to end the story it’s telling, as if it’s simply waiting for the credits to eventually fade in and let us know it’s over. Even as much as we enjoy hanging out with all the guys in the club (the original ones, anyway), we know that the journey has to end, but we’re made to wait too long for that ending to get started, which only serves to feed the slight-but-noticeable pacing problem the film occasionally falls back into. Still, even with a few minor complaints like light pacing issues and strange accents, there’s little that can damper the movie’s “good hang” time.
 
My biggest hope for this movie, even if it is a stretch, is that audiences will turn out for it enough so that studios get the message that these kinds of movies are wanted in theatrical spaces, and that we want to see movie stars looking cool with great screen presence in a movie about dudes just rocking so hard. Maybe that’s a pipe dream, but it’s a dream film fans need to keep alive, and it’s a dream quite clearly that filmmakers like Jeff Nichols believe in as much as we do. I’ve waited for a long time for a film like The Bikeriders to come back to the silver screen (even Hit Man didn’t get that opportunity properly) and I’m happy to say that, at least for me, it was well worth the wait.
 
I’m giving “The Bikeriders” an 8.2/10
 
- The Friendly Film Fan