The Bikeriders
Cinestudio
Hartford, CT
Aug. 3, 2024
“You can’t have him!” Kathy shouts at Johnny, the leader of the Chicago Vandals bike club, after her husband Benny nearly loses his foot during a brawl caused by his refusal to remove his gang’s colors while in an unfriendly bar.
That moment comes almost halfway into the movie The Bikeriders, which I saw at Cinestudio on Tuesday night. It’s the pivotal scene in the movie, where both characters and the film acknowledge that there’s a love triangle between Benny (played with dreamy aloofness by Austin Butler), his wife Kathy (Jodie Comer, channeling a young Winona Ryder) and Johnny (the always excellent Tom Hardy).
The Bikeriders, based on a book of the same name by Danny Lyon, begins in a bar with Kathy going to meet one of her girlfriends. That’s where she first encounters the Chicago Vandals, a bike club started and run by Johnny. The men of the club are crude and rambunctious, but Johnny assures Kathy that they’re harmless and just looking for fun. She meets Benny there as well, and after a ride on his bike and her jealous boyfriend running off, the two begin dating, and marry only five weeks later.
The movie is framed through the reporting of Lyon (played unobtrusively by Mike Faist), who travels with the bike club taking pictures and recording stories. He conducts interviews with members of the club from 1968 through 1973, although the story is told primarily through Kathy’s interviews. The movie admits to being “inspired by” the book, and it’s pretty easy to tell which parts are at least partially created by writer and director Jeff Nichols — namely the parts that Danny isn’t present for.
There’s a cast of colorful rogues who make up the club, from Cockroach, who earned his name from being dirty and eating bugs, to the late addition of Funny Sonny (Norman Reedus in a great cameo). They’re allowed some moments of poignancy and introspection, such as when Zipco (Michael Shannon) recounts his emotionally painful rejection from the military.
But this story is about the central triangle among Kathy, Johnny and Benny. This is not a romantic love triangle, although that has nothing to do with the intensity of the love that Johnny and Benny feel for each other. In fact, it’s that relationship that begins the group’s transformation from a rowdy social club into something resembling a gang.
As I mentioned above, Benny visits a bar while wearing his Chicago Vandals gear, and is jumped by two men who tell him that he can’t wear his colors there. During the fight, Benny is hit with a shovel that severs a tendon in his foot and he faces the possibility that the foot might be amputated. In response, Johnny orders his men to burn down the bar and cripple the men who attacked Benny.
Kathy has had enough. She goes to Johnny and asks him to kick Benny out of the club, because there’s no other way he’ll quit. Johnny not only refuses to kick him out, he swings in the completely opposite direction by offering Benny the opportunity to take over the club one day.
Perhaps I should have described the movie as a love quadrilateral, because in the end the only person that Benny truly loves is himself. Leadership and marriage are not for him. As the gang grows in size and influence, it also becomes more violent. Eventually Johnny can’t take it anymore either, and offers the club to Benny. Benny’s not having it, though, and he’s not there to fulfill his or Kathy’s expectations. He rides off in the middle of the night on his bike.
The Bikeriders is fun for the first half an hour or so, but becomes increasingly tedious as the movie progresses. There’s a talented cast and colorful characters, but the plot gives them nothing to do as the predictable story beats of good times gone wrong play out. By the time a young hotshot challenges Johnny for control of what is functionally a gang (Toby Wallace, literally unnamed in the movie), it’s obvious that he’s about to die. It’s so obvious that I find it hard to believe that Johnny couldn’t see the writing on the wall himself. It’s even obvious when the challenger asks for a knife fight, and then unceremoniously blows Johnny away. At this point I was checking my watch to see how much time was left in the movie.
Johnny’s death brings Benny back home after a year in self-imposed exile. He sits outside of Kathy’s house, the same way he did when they first met and he convinced her to date him. He begins to cry, for perhaps the first time in his adult life. But he’s not crying for Johnny’s loss, or for the pain he’s caused Kathy. He’s crying for himself, because the good old days are gone, because the shiniest mirror that reflects his own vanity is broken. There’s an interesting movie in understanding that man, but The Bikeriders keeps Benny too aloof, too cool for us to ever get to know him.
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The Bikeriders plays at Cinestudio through Sept. 5.
Jamil goes to the theater at Real Art Ways for the first time.
