R | 1h 56m | Drama, Romance, Adventure, Crime | June 21, 2024
The writing of this review of “The Bikeriders” serendipitously coincided with my just having read books about undercover cops of the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agency (ATF) infiltrating three of America’s top-five most notorious OMGs (outlaw motorcycle gangs). Namely, the Hells Angels, the Mongols, and the Pagans.
No doubt these books will also eventually be made into movies. Based on Danny Lyon’s 1968 book about America’s fourth heavyweight OMG, the Outlaws (the fifth OMG are the Bandidos), “The Bikeriders” can be considered the prequel to those movies. They are no doubt roaring down the turnpike towards us as we speak on stolen, chopped, and engine-enhanced Harley-Davidsons.
As opposed to the Italian and Russian mafias and the Mexican and South American drug cartels, one-percenter OMG’s are America’s very own, homegrown, bona fide crime organizations, but they are steeped in the same drug-running, gun-running, prostitution, human trafficking, extortion, murder, as the rest of the world’s organized crime syndicates.
“One percenters” are so named because William Berry, a former president of the American Motorcyclist Association, declared in 1960 that 99 percent of motorcyclists were law-abiding citizens—implying the last one percent were outlaws. “One percent-er” has been a proudly worn and prominently featured OMG patch ever since.
The most well-known of the bunch, the Hells Angels, came to America’s attention via gonzo journalist Hunter Thompson’s 1967 essay about them, and Tom Wolfe’s reference in his 1968 groundbreaking book “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.” The societal menace and lethality of OMGs dawned on Americans, however, after footage emerged of a Hells Angel member fatally stabbing a concert-goer when the Rolling Stones hired the Angels to run security at their infamous 1969 Altamont, California rock concert.
‘The Bikeriders’
“The Bikeriders” features a rockin' soundtrack and some fine performances: a brooding Austin Butler sans his recent, Southern-fried “Elvis” accent and British actor Tom Hardy recycling his Al Capone voice from Josh Trank’s 2020 film. British actress Jodie Comer steals scenes from all of them using a Chicago accent that sounds like she researched it to the point of having figured out that early-1960s Chicago-ese still had quite a bit of singsong-y Swedish immigrant influence seeping through.
Inspired by Marlon Brando’s iconic 1953 movie “The Wild One,” family man Johnny (Hardy) starts a Chicago motorcycle racing club and calls it “the Vandals.” Director Nichols’s bike drama pays homage to “The Wild One"; it’s almost like a color version. In terms of a plot, one can really only allude to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s observation that “It’s not the destination; it’s the journey.” That said, it’s all basically about Kathy trying to keep her marriage to Benny afloat, while Johnny tries to recruit Benny as the next club president.
It opens with the scene from the trailer: Benny (Butler) of the Vandals motorcycle club is drinking way too early in the day in a mostly empty neighborhood bar. He’s wearing his gang colors (leather vest with the club insignia and top and bottom “rockers” denoting club name, and chapter, respectively). A couple of regulars drag him outside for some punching, switch-blade-brandishing, and shovel-whacking.
The Gang’s All Here
We meet the members of the motorcycle club, in all their grubby uniqueness. There’s not enough time to fully flesh out each character, but a couple of personalities stand out. The cheerful Cockroach (Emory Cohen) hopes someday to be a motorcycle cop, while Zipco (Michael Shannon) hates, as he calls them, “pinkos.” He’s not referring to communists or the various gradations of leftists, but misusing the term to generally encompass the upwardly mobile.
The Vandals aren’t exactly beta males but they’re all fairly affable. The alpha is Johnny. When chapters of the club begin to form around the country, Johnny’s still in command, and when someone challenges his authority, Johnny throws down the gauntlet for a winner-take-all duel, querying: “Fists or knives?” He senses leadership quality in Benny and keeps pestering him to prepare himself to take over the club, but Benny’s a reluctant king. Later, Johnny wistfully philosophizes: “You can give everything you got to a thing, and it’s still gonna do what it’s gonna do.”
When a young wannabe gangster called “The Kid” (Toby Wallace) finally challenges Johnny, The Kid gives new meaning to the old adage of bringing a knife to a gunfight. The Kid also brings a degree of empathy to his character and is really the aching wound at the center of this story.
Gangs happen when male youth aren’t guided by tribal male elders and tribal warriors through the time-honored boyhood-to-manhood rite of passage. Gang culture tries to fill in this vacuum of lost sacred masculine culture. The Kid is a biker version of John Leguizamo’s Benny Blanco from the Bronx, from the 1993 Al Pacino movie “Carlito’s Way.” Both these misguided, challenging youths are ambitious, unethical, and pathologically devoid of honor.
“The Bikeriders” hearkens back to a more innocent America when motorcycle clubs were just men, bikes, beer, and the pretty girls who were inevitably drawn to anarchy-loving bad boys like moths to flame. Men have testosterone—and that’s not toxic. Testosterone begets territoriality—and that’s still not toxic. Territoriality and boundary-guarding are the job of the warrior. But without proper guidance, testosterone leads to gangs and when you add in illicit commerce, territoriality becomes war.
Like I said, I just read three books about motorcycle gangs; each one more disturbing than the last. I consider myself appropriately calloused and jaded for a boomer, but I had to quit reading after a couple of descriptions of gang behavior that made even the hardcore undercover ATF field agents describing them want to lose their lunch.
On a Positive Note
There’s a trend happening where motorcycle clubs are doing more and more good deeds, like riding to deliver toys to children suffering from cancer, saving abused dogs, and so on. Movie star Jason Momoa rides with Redrum MC. It’s a largely indigenous group, and displays a 13 1/2 patch instead of a 1 percent patch, which represents standing up for the rights of Native Americans. The tide is turning, and hopefully we'll see a movie about that too.
