The Bikeriders (2023) Maybe the first problem with this film stems from its source....a book of photographs that chronicled the rise and fall of biker gangs from the mid 1960's to the early 70's,
The casting vividly duplicates the gritty real portraiture of the book. Yeah, these guys look and sound like the real thing. The two male leads (Tom Hardy, Austin Butler) evoke the taciturn, cooler-than-cool aura of the Leaders Of The Pack.
Butler does the mashup of James Dean, Marlon Brando and Steve McQueen, while Hardy mostly silently simmers as the grizzled, seen-it-all, done-it-all middle-aged rebel. Their fellow bikers are a collection of quirky oddballs, but only one of the actors playing them (Michael Shannon, of course), uses his craft to turn the character into a real person.
Stuck in the middle of all this revved-up machismo is an ordinary row home neighborhood girl Kathy (Jodie Comer). As the only verbose, semi-literate human in bikerworld, she functions as the film's on-screen and off-screen narrator-historian.
We've been Team Comer ever since she knocked us out in "Killing Eve", but here she's a jarring presence with her studied, over-played American middle-lower-class accent. The script forces her into braying out an endless stream of commentary and it never rises above a Graduate Acting class exercise. Her best moments come dialogue free, when she's able to wordlessly express her exhausted disgust at the biker lifestyle she stumbled into.
Oh, right....back to the bikers. We see the origin story (as simple as working stiff family man Hardy inspired by watching Brando in "The Wild One"). The culture starts innocently enough, with the guys, many with wives and children, seeking boozy brotherhood combined with the freedom of hitting the open road.
Still anchored in 1950's values of friendship and loyalty, this black leather Camelot crumbles with the influx of the Vietnam afflicted boomers, PTSD tormented veterans who arrive with their moral compasses already smashed to pieces. This all leads to the modern day biker gangs we're all familiar with.....fuel injected gangsters-on-wheels deep into drug dealing, sex-trafficking and murder for hire.
Every so often, the film bursts out with some riveting sequences, energized by a soundtrack of non-stop needle drops of rough tough 60's pop songs. But the overall effect is that of a movie of still photos as carefully composed as the ones from the book that inspired it. That doesn't make for good storytelling.
Butler and Hardy's characters remain ciphers, and Comer's attempted midwest blatherings does nothing but slow the movie down.
By the time 'Bikeriders' ends, we're left realizing we could've saved time by thumbing through the pages of the book.....2 stars (**).
No comments:
Post a Comment