The Bikeriders

I remember seeing the trailers for The Bikeriders and being vaguely interested but then I genuinely didn’t hear anything about it upon release and after it came out it was met with complete silence. I haven’t heard anyone talk about or acknowledge this movie which is a bit surprising considering Austin Butler’s recent success and popularity. And I am morbidly curious as to why so here we go.

I like the framing device of this being an interview. It is based on a book about this club in the 60s so using that as a very literal jumping off point was actually a really good idea. It allows the audience to see an outside perspective of someone who was technically close to the club but not in it.

If there was ever a perfect role for Tom Hardy it is definitely the leader of a motorcycle club. Also his name is Tom Hardy he was cast for this off his name alone.

Benny is a fucking problem child and Johnny will do anything to protect him. We are about halfway through the movie and it feels very surface level still. I think the cutting away to Kathy giving the interviews is really hindering the flow of the film. We had this same problem with Mufasa, when you have a framing device it needs to stay that way. It is a FRAME, stop cutting into the middle of the narrative to interject it. It really slows down the pacing and breaks up the structure in a way that just makes the narrative drag on.

We are seeing the rise of other motorcycle clubs and other people wanting to join the Vandals. We also see the cops scared to step in after they cross over into being real criminals.

Johnny is becoming more and more exhausted with the club. It's too big for him now and the members are very much out of his hands.

Honestly the narrative is a little messy. If we had just focused on Benny, or Johnny, or Kathy, or Johnny and Benny’s relationship or the rise and fall of the club then we’d have a lot more to work with. But the writers couldn’t seem to make a decision and so they ended up with a little bit of everything which just makes all the bits and pieces a little shallow. We should have dove deeper into this. Now part of it was definitely a framing problem, they attempted to build a whole narrative around some pictures and interviews and you could tell that they were trying not to fictionalize too much to fill in the blanks. But that’s just not possible with source material like this. They should have leaned fully into the story or not done it at all. Because the structure they chose was extremely lackluster and left too much room for mistakes.

The casting was impeccable. Austin Butler and Tom Hardy were great choices and this could have been a really good piece of work for them but the movie just wasted so much of its potential which we know is my favorite.

Another wasted potential movie clocks in at a 5/10. It really could have been great and it had some good moments that were stopped by the surface level writing and the poor structural decisions. I can see why this movie was quickly forgotten, which is perhaps a worse fate than being talked about endlessly because of how bad it is. The Bikeriders could have been brilliant and emotional but it chose to shy away from every opportunity to do so.