Unpopular Opinion: The Bikeriders

 

Unpopular Opinion: The Bikeriders

by Kristin Battestella

Although nearly every other film lover I know adores The Bikeriders; it's an understatement to say this 2023 Jeff Nichols (Mud) drama starring Austin Butler (Elvis), Jodie Comer (Killing Eve), and Tom Hardy (Lawless) was a disappointment for me. Poor framework, confused narratives, weak characterizations, and muddled storytelling are but a few of the numerous problems here. Presented below are my stream of consciousness notes while critically viewing The Bikeriders for an upcoming video guest appearance with The Jay Days Reviews Channel. These notes have been edited for corrections, redundancy, and clarity.

The Bikeriders takes place in the late 60s/early 70s yet the lighting is far too contemporary with the dark gradient. The classic needle drops don't work because it is so damn darkly light and edited with today's look instead of a vintage feeling. Butler's Benny looks too young for the time. Kathy's accent is juvenile. Is Benny's voice fake, too? He sounds dubbed and humorous. How old are they supposed to be? Everyone's playing at being tough. The entire framework hinging on Kathy's point of view is silly. Why don't we start with her walking into the club and meeting everyone for the first time? This is very slow to get going, the narration says they get married but then it's another music cue and motorcycle montage. Benny's a bad boy howling on his bike but no one thinks he's bad ass except him and her.

Twenty minutes in and I want to skip ahead. The smirking, duck face, modern squinting is not James Dean. All the important things – marriage, arrests – are happening off camera. Kathy hear tells us what others are thinking and feeling of how the club was founded and recounting events before she was even there. It makes no frigging sense! Instead of introducing everybody and the club forming in order, everything is intercut and confusing with flashbacks. Why isn't this from Mike Faist (Challengers) as the reporter Lyon's point of view? We're meeting everyone through a third party asking questions of another person who doesn't know? Is this about the forming of the gang and the problems that ensue, Lyon covering the bad boys, or just deluded Kathy? This needed less – the bikers, the interviewing, or the woman ruffling feathers – yet all of them keep restarting with empty montages and voiceovers. Very few scenes have dialogue and they only last a few minutes. Everything Kathy is telling could have been spoken.

Who's perspective is this in scenes with Kathy's narration when she is not present? For all the motorcycles, this is very slow with one biker spouting wisdom, another contesting one, and one asking the reporter why he's doing it. The subject is surprisingly light yet it's better when the movie plays out without the disjointed narration and montages. Every dramatic scene ends with a brawl, music cue, or montage with no thematic payoff to whatever gang struggles are supposed to be happening. Is the reporter Lyon even introduced as to why he is there? Like they would let a kid with a camera hang around while they are breaking people's legs? There is no emotion, touching, or loving to our couple. Why are we supposed to be wowed by her theorizing with the cigarette and the accent like she is so wise? Kathy's an idiot in a shit relationship with shit people burning down bars and wrestling in the mud. Why is she telling us what Johnny is thinking rather than him speaking for himself?

Benny hides out for weeks in a hotel but wannabe queen bee Kathy tells us about it rather than the audience seeing any on the run tension. Is Hardy's Johnny voice meant to be funny? He's closer to her husband than she is, and without the narration or the interviewer maybe this love triangle would have been better. Otherwise, everything is too tame with no clear character motivations. Kathy wants him to quit riding while she also smokes and brags about the gang life? She's the drunken unnecessary entity in Benny's life. The reporter inexplicably leaves, Johnny is not Brando, and Cry Baby had more action. Benny and Johnny have so few scenes together, and one shadowed homoerotic scene is too contemporary. A movie of the era would be brightly lit with subtext in plain sight rather than using visuals to hide something. It's all so playing dress up performative. Is this a comedy? There's a funeral? Who died?

Our tough guys give such sensitive speeches, but Johnny has so few scenes. Conversations cut back to the reporter so Kathy can tell us a year later the club changed. I don't think I've ever been so confused by a film. Why don't we get to see anything in real time? Kathy isn't with the gang for most of the time but she's telling us of bikers coming back from Vietnam smoking pot, and the only way we're supposed to know time has passed is because of the music cues? The characters all look and act the same through any supposed changes. Everything is strangely non-sexual and chaste yet it's Johnny who saves Kathy from the gang violence, not her husband Benny. He's too busy blowing smoke, literally, in another music montage. Who's story is this? When does this movie end?

Kathy says she can't live like this, but they never seemed married in the first place. They are only in a handful of scenes together. It's comical how she says an attempted rape would make her want to kill herself and then goes on a tangent about people who kill themselves being too stupid. She shouts at him to leave the club but Benny is so soft spoken and unmoved it's as if they are in different scenes. The intercutting between them makes it look like they didn't even film the scene together. Nothing happens and this movie is a plain, nonsensical mess. The viewer been knew Kathy is a non factor to Benny and the gang but what little story there is is so damn routine, missing the mark in depicting any motorcycle gang edgy. Everyone's talking for Benny or about Benny but we hardly ever see him. Was the framework created in the editing room to work around Butler?

Repeated biker challenges don't mean anything, so let's wrap this up already. We're told how it all ends after the fact in the last fifteen minutes? Are we supposed to take the entire thing as just Kathy's shitty unreliable point of view? How does she know anything? Why does her opinion of the gang turning to real criminals and drugs after she is away from it matter? It's ridiculous that the reporter shows up again to ask what went down rather than audience seeing what actually happened. How did they afford to move to Florida? It just ends with foolish Kathy smiling like she got her way by doing absolutely nothing other than being a pathetic sap. There's no twist that she hired the guy to take care of Johnny? Bummer.