The Bikeriders Review – A Wild Ride, Excellent Coming of Age Drama
- Details
- Category: Film
- Published on Tuesday, 18 June 2024 10:32
- Written by Janet Walker
The Bikeriders, from Focus Features, brings to the screen a coming-of-age story as America evolves and with it a Midwest motorcycle club, who are forced to change with the times or be overrun and lose everything.
The film begins as the camera zooms in on a motorcycle gang jacket, that reads, Chicago and Vandals, and two men approaching the man, played by Austin Butler. He is told to remove the jacket, and he tells the men, "You'd have to kill me to get this jacket off." The men smash a barstool over his back and toss him outside.
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Then the story returns to the beginning. It was America 1965, and the nation was still confronting the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, through a collective PTSD the times they were a changing.
The story centers on Kathy, played by Jodie Comer, as she is talking with a reporter, who is doing a photobook. Through her recollections we meet Johnny, played by Tom Hardy, and Benny, played by Austin Butler. She explains that one night she went with her girlfriend to the Vandals local hangout and by chance met Benny. And it was that easy. After that night they were a couple. And she became part of the Vandals family.
Most of the Vandals, a motorcycle club in Illinois, grew up in the 1950s, before the traumatic shock of the 1960s, and even though they were all misfits, they were the family they built. Suddenly they were more than weekend riders, and Johnny decides to start a motorcycle club.
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His right-hand man, Brucie, played by Damon Herriman, becomes part of the club's charter, as well as Benny and Zipco, played by Michael Shannon. But the leader was always Johnny, he made the decisions on who they let join. To him, unquestionable loyalty that formed an unbreakable bond was more important than anything.
Throughout the film the simplicity of the beginning becomes more complex, as the Vandals continue to grow and attract lone bikers, like Funny Sunny, from California, played by Norman Reedus, and their reputation, part true, part myth, deterred outside interference.
The local teenage street thugs, raised in the tumultuous unrestrained 1960s, believe with every act of violence they are flexing their future biker muscles and when they approach Johnny about joining the Vandals they are turned down. Unable to accept the answer, the teenage street thugs move to a different city and join a different chapter.
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After they graduated from street thugs to full fledge menace to society, ready to burn down anything, destroy everyone, settle every score and exact vengeance, they challenge Johnny for club president.
Even though Johnny is ready to retire from the club he founded. He feels drawn to fight this kid, who just doesn't understand what the motorcycle club meant to him. This sets up the finale.
Having the opportunity to screen the film at AFI Film Festival 2023, The Bikeriders, a compelling dramatic thriller, is an excellent coming of age story, as it highlights the downward spiral of life in an ever-changing America, from the time when gang disputes were settled with fists and knives, to turf wars, club rivalries, and differences in the club directions, all contributing to the same shift every gang, in every city in America, was confronting as the streets became filled with narcotics, prostitutes, and gambling which left a void for control.
The cinematography also presents two realities. The dark and the light. The long days of endless summers, sun glinting off the golden wheatfields projects a feeling of freedom, of escape, a return to a simpler time, and is hypnotic, and then the images when the outsiders arrive and bring their unrestrained violence, freedom is replaced with fear, and loyalty is lost.
Riveting and gripping, The Bikeriders opens June 21, 2024, exclusively in theaters. See it.
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Country: U.S.
Language: English.
Runtime: 116 minutes.
Release Date: June 21, 2024.
Director: Jeff Nichols.
Producer: Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, Arnon Milchan, Sarah Green.
Executive Producer: Fred Berger, Sam Hanson, David Kern, Yarlv Milchan, Michael Schaefer.
Writer: Jeff Nichols.
Cast: Austin Butler, Jodie Comer, Tom Hardy, Mike Faist, Norman Reedus, Michael Shannon, Boyd Holbrook, Damon Herriman, Beau Knapp, Emory Cohen, Karl Glusman, Toby Wallace, Happy Anderson, Paul Sparks, Will Oldham, Nathan Neorr, Mierka Girten, Paul Dillon, Valerie Jane Parker, Tony Donno, Mike Endoso, Rachel Lee Kolis, Phuong Kubacki, Erin Scerbak, Andrew Riley Stephens, Forba Shepherd, David Myers Gregory, Ryan Wesley Gilreath, Michael Abbott Jr., Jim Freivogel, Maggie Cramer, Sara Mackie, Johanna McGinley, Steve Marvel, Nicholas Hargous, Radek Lord, Alex Haydon, Jerry Mullins, Jordan Mullins, Beeca Howell, William Cross, Kagga Jayson, Jamie Mitchell.
