The Bikeriders - OFF TOPIC

Cinema has seen biker gangs roaming its frames very often, something with specific connotations for this lifestyle and sort of groups, which leads to The Bikeriders have a series of expectations to live up to and simultaneously a whole cinematic trope to distinguish itself from.

Being inspired from a photobook is both something that makes Jeff Nichols' film an outstanding attempt aswell as a film under severe limitation: it is really remarkable how the casting department managed to match a stellar cast with some of the people photographed in the book, and the iconographic insistence on certain framings and settings makes The Bikeriders by Danny Lyon truly come to life in the frames of the film. Yet, this liaison with the printed page is what is limiting Nichols' The Bikeriders.

Instead of letting the story breathe, exist in a fictional narrative, it is imprisoned in a narrative frame that employs flashbacks, interviews, and becomes an anectodical storytelling a vital derivative of the post-Scorsese modernisms. The voice-over narration and continous jumps and interventions are nd up not favouring the storyline, which could have worked better if the film was not so busy trying to redirect to its nonfictional origins.

The Bikeriders story is certainly not something unseen before, a story of rise and fall in the context of biker gangs. It is a story that leads also to unexpected endings, and with a very good potential of cinematic narrative, of armospheric buildup. It definitely does sometime achieve it, but not fully: the opening  scene with Austin Butler in an inn is an example where the atmospheric potentials of a beautifully lit interior feel a bit underused. At the same time, later on, a beautifully darkly lit scene between Tom Hardy and Austin Butler does prove that occasionally The Bikeriders excels in what it is supposed to be like.

Motorcycles and obscenity go hand in hand, a character says - something that the film proves but against which its thesis is built. The generational gap whithin the gang is seemingly justifying some actions of the older gang members, leaving one to ask whether The Bikeriders ends up glamourizing biker violence in general in its differentiation between an almost "positive" old biker gang and a more negative, criminal new generation. Certainly, there are several aspects that seem murky, for example little of the biker ideology is evident: for example, Norman Reedus' cameo features a symbol relative to the nazis, but no other clue in any passage suggests an expansion on that.

It is in the performances department that the film truly excels: Jodie Comer's transformation in a midwestern a typical housewife, Austin Butler's appearance, Tom Hardy's hidden tears during a specific monologue are some intense moments that are commendable.

The Bikeriders is a film that almost made it to become some outstanding masterpiece. It didn't reach the end of the road though, and much like Austin's character does during a chase early on, The Bikeriders slowly broke down in the middle of the Illinois plains: a beautiful setting, indeed, but also a bit plain, simple and unoriginal and most definitely not the ultimate biker gang movie it was supposed to be.