No. 12 The Bikeriders (2023) 96 of 100

 

This is likely to be my most up to date offering of the whole blog as I caught this on its cinema release at the Paisley Showcase. It was expensive at £20.30 for our two tickets but happily I had a £20 gift card that I won at a raffle at my Mum’s care home – back of the net! It was a sparsely attended afternoon showing but the film was decent, if a bit grubby and derivative.

The film has the familiar framing of a documentary maker having present day interviews with the principals, with their reminisces detailed in extensive flashbacks. Most of the narrative is through the viewpoint of Kathy, played by Jodie Comer with a funny accent that swings between Liverpool and New Jersey.

We are back in the 1950s and mumbling Tom Hardy is smitten with Marlon Brando in ‘The Wild One’. He decides to start a motorcycle club for racing and talking about bikes and things take off from there. The main framing device is Jodie Cramer’s Kathy, who stumbles on the gang at a bar. She gets her white Levis dirtied by all the gabby hands but, before she leaves, she spots the dreamy Benny. She lets him take her home and by the next day her boyfriend has left and within a month she is married to the pouting biker.

In scenes very reminiscent of ‘Goodfellas’ she talks us through various incidents and introduces a lot of the characters in voice over flashbacks. Amongst these is Shannon’s character Zipco who doesn’t get the screen time he deserves. This blog may be biased, but he’d definitely a lot more interesting than the vapid Benny, who is played by Elvis himself, Austin Butler.

Shannon’s Zipco is clearly in it for the drugs and enjoys regaling his devotees with his tales, including a funny one about him failing the Vietnam draft.

As time passes the core values of the club are diminished with younger, more violent and drug obsessed members joining up. I think we are meant to feel sad for the original scoff law bikers who are now being put out to pasture but that didn’t happen for me.

The gang lacked any empathy and their seedy lives certainly weren’t aspirational. There were some quite brutal and nasty scenes with Elvis, who was clearly channelling Jax Teller, getting the worst of it.

Towards the end the ageing gang start using their cars more (gasp!) and several falling outs and some fresh challenges to the leadership suggest that the sun is setting on what was laughably called’ the golden age of bike riding’.

The sets and costumes were good and I imagine bike enthusiasts would be drooling over some of the chrome on show. The jump around narrative didn’t help me engage with the story, thin as it was. The film aspired to be a love letter to simpler times – fair enough if your simpler times are burning down bars and feeling up women.

Shannon looked all of his 50 odd years in this and was used sparingly. This was his latest collaboration with director Jeff Nichols and I could see his brief appearances being a favour to the director.

I’m guessing that everyone involved had a great time dressing up and drinking and smoking, it just seemed insubstantial to me and an undeserved puff piece to some pretty reprehensible characters.

When is Shannon-On? - 03.47

Outcome? - Reportedly on a fishing boat in Texas.

Film 3/5

Shannon Stars 3/5