About The Bikeriders

Post 1592:

I think a movie about a motorcycle club that turns into a gang sounds great. I was looking forward to watching The Bikeriders. Oh well, maybe the next thing I hope for will be awesome.

Is this a bad film? No. The director is awesome, the bikes are cool and most of the actors do a great job. Tom Hardy is one of my favorites. Seems like an intense guy. He’s an intense supervillain in The Dark Knight Rises, an intense but quirky gangster in Peaky Blinders—I won’t go on, but it’s a pretty good guess that whatever Hardy is doing, he’s going to be hunched and brooding and on the verge of violence.

So he’s in his comfort zone. My main hangup might be the other two leads. The narrator is a woman with a midwestern accent that is so midwestern it makes me wonder if Chicago moved to Manitoba. Hard to focus with that going on. The main dude character played by Austin Butler is a main dude character. Not much more to say about him. He has one expression and the whole too cool to be bothered thing is super awesome cool but this guy is no James Dean. James Dean could act. This guy, I don’t know. Maybe he had too many pills.

I felt like the film was trying to show me the sense of brotherhood that a biker gang offers to those on the fringes of society. There was some of that. Mostly, it felt like a bunch of disconnected souls going in vaguely the same direction. Maybe that was the point. I’d watch it again, but there’s the problem. It wasn’t entertaining enough to watch again.

I may be way off but it came across as a crime story without a lot of crime and without much of a story. Perhaps the point was to show the little character moments. I thought the guy from California played by Boyd Holbrook was great. He had an interesting vulnerability and he talked about bikes and bike parts, most of which are more fascinating than the other characters.

Don’t get me wrong, it has its moments. A good try, perhaps. I can’t help but wonder what a little more plot and a better lead actor could’ve done.

I’m off to look at motorcycles. Driving my car fast and reckless is great, but after seeing this movie I need an injection of hardcore excitement. My final few days should be a real hoot! Cheers and see you after.