Movie Review
Biker Rider
Running time: 116 minutes. Rated R (for extensive language, violence, drug use, brief sexual scenes). Now playing in theaters.
Think of Bikers , starring Austin Butler, Jodie Comer and Tom Hardy, as a good enough version of Goodfellas .
Martin Scorsese’s crime classic hasn’t quite taken over as much as newer gangster films have, but the similarities between the two films are impossible to ignore.
Rather than harboring dreams of becoming a New York mobster in the late 1950s, like Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill, Butler’s bright-eyed Benny becomes a member of a Chicago motorcycle club called the Vandals in the ’60s.
A nostalgic narration also propels this familiar story, but it comes not from our protagonist but from Benny’s neurotic girlfriend, Cathy (Comer), who reminisces with the photojournalist (Mike Feist) who accompanied her on the trip.
“I’ve had a rough time ever since I met Benny,” she admits in her thick South Side accent, describing the seductive night he caught her eye at a biker bar.
After running away from home and finding a loyal group of friends led by the terrifying Johnny (Hardy), Benny initially feels a sense of elation and belonging, but the good times soon fall apart as a violent and dangerous reality confronts them both.
You know how to do that.
This “combine, rise, fall” formula is undoubtedly effective. What’s conspicuously missing here is confusion.
Based on Danny Lion’s 1967 book of photographs, the film has the feel of a series of deliberately curated snapshots: still, intriguing. People die, of course, but “Biker Riders” is strangely free of blood.
The film is as smooth as new asphalt and leaves us nostalgic for a pothole or two.
What “Bikers” doesn’t lack is atmosphere. Nichols’s “Windy City” film is faithful to a quaint, dingy era: the dingy corner bar with its glass-brick façade is unmistakable, and the rugged supporting cast, including Michael Shannon, Norman Reedus and Karl Glusman, seem like hard-edged guys who sit modestly in their chairs.
The three core actors formed their own informal club: The Funny Accent Society.
Hardy, a master of the mutter, who played a cranky Chicago character named Al Capone in the awful 2020 film Capone, speaks in the same growling voice to Johnny: He broods, growls, spits out incomprehensible words, then repeats them.
“Come again?” we say. Unfortunately, it’s a movie, so Hardy carries on talking unflinchingly.
I’ve been a big fan of Comer’s since her brilliant performance as the Russian femme fatale in “Killing Eve” and in Broadway’s “Prima Facie.”
As Cassie, she’s both kind and bold, the rock-solid pillar that holds it all together, and Comer elevates her character to almost cartoonish heights — her accent sounds like a female version of “Da Bears” — but it doesn’t make her any less relatable or likable.
Butler still has that Elvis vibe as Benny, and while his Presley impersonation has been mocked, his nasal voice doesn’t hurt in “Biker Riders,” and his voice effortlessly transports us to a bygone era.
Butler is that rare leading man who makes you believe time travel really exists.
