"The Bikeriders" Review: A Bland Ode to Blandness

Jeff Nichols' drama doesn't crash and burn; it just doesn't have any gas in the tank.

August 2, 2024

In 1878, American writer Gertrude Stein’s family settled on a 10-acre farm in Oakland, California. She lived there from 6 to 17, when her older brother moved the family to San Francisco. In reflecting on her time in Oakland, Stein coined her most well-known quote: “There’s no there there.”

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Fast forward nearly a century to 1969 when, amid counterculture, Easy Rider came out. It encapsulated a generational movement, where the youth decried societal assimilation and espoused free love, drug use, communal living, and generally not giving a fuck.

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One could write from dusk till dawn about how that same generation grew into delusional cultists worshiping a reality TV star, accused rapist, and known associate of a convicted child molester while simultaneously discarding every liberal ideal that fueled the movement they started 60 years ago, but this article will focus on the fact that ever since that summer of ‘69 Hollywood has foolishly tried to convince us that motorcycles are cool.

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This isn’t to say that some motorcycles aren’t cool, but this is more about biker gangs who ride around on Harley-Davidsons in cut-off leather jackets musing about the freedom of the road. They promise a breaking of chains that bind us to office chairs, mortgage payments, piano recitals, and, on the more prurient side, vanilla sex. If we buy a bike and leave everything behind, we’ll find nirvana and never look back.

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Of course, this isn't feasible for most well-adjusted people, hence its consistent use in media. After all, films about alternative lifestyles are pipe dreams for most, and movies are escapism. We adore fantasy flicks and sci-fi adventures, but the greatest means to break the monotony is the pivot, not the fast break: it feels further from day-to-day life to see people like us living a different life than anything from Marvel.

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Thus, creating a compelling story within that idea would seem simple, hence why everything from Easy Rider to Wild Hogs has struggled to keep itself afloat: ideas only take you so far, and complacency comes easy. Creating a compelling film means pushing beyond what something offers on paper; to follow the metaphor, the words must pop off the page.

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Strangely, The Bikeriders opens up all the doors, although many are too typical: Benny, the brooding loner who struggles with emotional openness; Johnny, the stone-faced gang leader; Kathy, the wife roped into a world beyond her understanding.

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But when it walks through them, it's moderately compelling when it affords its characters more substance than expected. Johnny has a ruthless streak, but only within the necessary constructs to maintain order and (a sense of) civility within the family he’s built in the bar. Benny loves to enforce his overwhelming emotional mystery, but Austin Butler's quiet vulnerability makes him more than the sum of his parts. Kathy feels more like a quirky narrator than a fully realized person, but Jodie Comer lets you access her more deeply, though not as consistently as you’d prefer.

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Thus, as the narrative progresses, seemingly aimed at nothing in particular but insistent that it has something meaningful to impart, we're apathetic. The characters are limp, and the story feels confused and empty, but something hooks us enough to keep us watching, even if that hook is straining to keep us in our seats. Even now, it’s a struggle to recall a single scene, whether a small step forward or a giant leap, that resonates. I can’t remember the roar of an engine, a swell of emotion, a single conversation, absolutely nothing. The adage goes that there’s a thin line between love and hate, but that thin line has a name more devastating to any form of art than anything else: indifference.

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Even when it introduces the initial Vandals’ national expansion and the resulting corruption of the gang’s original intent, morphing from a pseudo-familial reprieve to a vessel for violence and criminality, bringing in a young man with a troubled home life eager to find his place no matter the cost, it never gains momentum. We see the writing on the wall the moment the kid’s peach fuzz consumes the screen; we know who he is, and what he'll mean to the story and its characters, and each step in his journey is predictable. Within that comes a degree of apathy, but if executed well, the most familiar things inspire the strongest response. Alas, it never gets there.

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Why? Well, it’s rather simple. If you want something to work, you have to commit.

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No, that doesn’t mean throwing everything at the wall and assuming it will all stick; it simply means that everything you do needs the force to make the desired impact. Imagine trying to hit a home run on a check swing or making fried chicken in a microwave. If your villain has a traumatic backstory, it needs more than one scene of an abusive father and an in-denial mother. If your technical protagonist is going to be emotionally avoidant, he can’t just take off when things get tough and show up crying when he gets some bad news. You have to dive in, prioritize, explore, and deliver: Jeff Nichols’ movie does none of these.

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Unfortunately, while there’s nothing offensive about The Bikeriders, there’s nothing inspiring about it either. It has a suffocating air of pointlessness, never knowing which character it’s truly about, what story it wants to tell, what message it wants to send, or what impression it wants to leave. No scene will sear into the memory; though all proficient, no performance will linger in the consciousness. Movies like this are simultaneously a dime a dozen and alarmingly unique in that each is convinced of its greatness enough to rest on the laurels it falsely believes it possesses.

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So, does it finally convince us that biker gangs are cool? No, and considering that their cinematic signatures are violence, chain-smoking, and depravity, that is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

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Does it capture that mythic spirit of the open road, the power of a chosen family, the corruption of an organization crumbling from within, or the heartbreak of losing loved ones, whether through death or abandonment? No.

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The ultimate folly of The Bikeriders is that it functions as a faultless encapsulation of Gertrude Stein’s recollection of her childhood on that Oakland farm: in the end, there’s simply no “there” there.