Jeff Nichols' Riveting 'The Bikeriders' Stalls Out in the Back Half

It’s been seven years since writer/director Jeff Nichols last had a movie hit the big screen with 2016’s Loving. While The Bikeriders does not achieve the near-perfect highs of Nichols’ Take Shelter or Mud, it is largely worth the wait. Nichols takes his inspiration from photographer Danny Lyon’s 1968 book of photos (which bears the same title) documenting several years he spent with the Chicago Outlaws Motorcycle Club. The visual inspiration is clear throughout the film, with a number of shots and scene setups feeling like they were ripped to life from a photo album (which Nichols acknowledges with some of the actual photos included during the credit roll).

Over the course of his short six-film career, Nichols has revealed several themes he likes to explore. With The Bikeriders, it’s clear that what Nichols most pulled from Lyon’s photos was an exploration of masculinity steeped in the romantic nostalgia of a bygone era. Set in Chicago between 1965 and 1973, the film tracks the rise of the fictional Vandals motorcycle club. Most of the film is told from the point of view of Kathy (Jodie Comer) through her interviews with Danny (Mike Faust, playing the fictionalized role of the book’s author/photographer). It’s through Kathy’s meeting with a friend at a bar that she and the audience are introduced to the Vandals, including their founder Johnny (Tom Hardy) and the young troublemaker Benny (Austin Butler).

This mid-to-late ’60s version of the Vandals is not a gang; it’s truly a club focused on an era where guys often struggled to find societally acceptable ways to have meaningful connections and friendships with other guys. The club members hang out at a bar, ride around the Midwest, and picnic with other MCs. The irony of “guys who can’t follow rules [but] get together and make up rules” is not lost on Kathy as she helps guide the narrative long. While that narrative is not strictly linear, we learn both the legend and the truth of how and why Johnny founded the club and follow the Vandals MC as it grows and develops. While there is violence both around the club and even baked into its DNA — for example, when a rule is invoked to challenge club leadership, it involves an actual “fists or knives” fight — the first half of the film largely spends its time romanticizing the club with a surprising sense of humor (though my informal surveys have concluded that not every theater chuckled as much as me and those at my viewing). With a caveat that we’ll come back to it in a bit, it’s a near-perfect half of a film.

But you can feel a cloud over things, and the second half of the film follows the club into the storm. Almost suddenly, the Vandals are involved in all of the RICO-type criminal activities one associates with motorcycle clubs — drug running, gambling, prostitution, murdering, getting murdered, etc. As one character yells at another at one point, “What do you think this is? What’d you think it was gonna be?” And that is exactly the problem. The film’s pivot is not, in and of itself, what makes that back half a lot jankier. It’s how almost hamfisted it feels. Nichols gives some passing acknowledgment to a few of the reasons that the Vandals (and other clubs of the era) fell down this dark well. But he does not really take us there in an emotionally compelling way; he instead gets us there - it’s more destination than journey.

The effectiveness of this portion of the film may work better for some other viewers; for example, a late plot turn that felt absolutely obvious and inevitable to me ultimately failed to render the emotional punch it was looking for, but I know it landed for others. But the more divisive part of the film brings us back to the above-referenced caveat, which is that the entire movie, from the excellent first half to the clunkier back end, hinges on viewers being willing to buy into and submit to the accent work that Hardy and, especially, Comer come at us with. When Comer started talking with a “thanks for dat” accent that felt straight out of some of her Killing Eve intentional ridiculousness, I got very nervous about what the hell was happening. But I settled into her performance (which I would learn later is evidently a spot-on impression of the real Kathy’s accent). It was about twenty minutes into the film when I scratched out the note “I love her.” Not far behind her, Hardy — as he loves to do — bringing his own interesting vocal and accent choices. Again, it may not work for every viewer, but if it works for you, I promise it will work. Both of their performances are outstanding, and I would watch them doing anything as these characters maybe forever.

Butler, as the film’s third lead, is … well, he oozes the same preposterous charisma that he always does. While it remains to be seen how much actual acting talent he has behind that charisma and his good looks, that is a question for another film. His Benny is written as a largely blank slate, which means that Butler’s performance works well for the role as written, but that “as written” part of the character also further weakens the film. On its face, the film explores a kind of romantic triangle between Benny, Kathy, and Johnny. The real romance of the film is Benny’s romance with the road, but Benny being written as little more than a bit of a hot-headed blank slate stereotype feels like underwriting that underserves this aspect of the film and character. This further weakens the back half of the film as, again, the decisions only feel half-earned. My friends and colleagues have heard me rant ad nauseam about how most long films really do not need to be over two hours, and yet, this is a film that could have used an extra fifteen or twenty minutes to do the work.

Despite these shortcomings, The Bikeriders does not knock Nichols as one of our premiere filmmakers, nor will they prevent me from revisiting the film. While we talked about the three lead performances, it is worth noting that there are a number of other excellent performances throughout the film that help hold it up when it otherwise sags, from Michael Shannon to Norman Reedus to Damon Herriman (yes, it’s a very man-driven film in both themes and casting). The non-lead standout performance, though, comes from Boyd Holbrook. For many, there is probably an expectation of exactly what type of performance and energy Holbrook would bring to a ’60s-era MC member. Instead, he makes the great decision to play his kind of nerdy gearhead in a very soft, low-key way. It works, and I could watch him playing that role for hours.

Finally, the film has to be acknowledged for its visuals as, par for the course for Nichols, The Bikeriders is beautifully shot, lit, framed, etc. Adam Stone has been the cinematographer or director of photography for all of Nichols’ films, and their pairing makes absolutely lovely cinema. So yes, to some extent the film as a whole feels like a high school report on “here’s how motorcycle clubs went from fun to Sons of Anarchy.” But man does that report look good.