Think of “The Bikeriders,” starring Austin Butler, Jodie Comer and Tom Hardy, as a good-enough “Goodfellas.” Martin Scorsese’s crime classic doesn’t pass the torch so much as the new gang movie passes the time. However, the similarities between the two are tough to ignore.
Rather than harboring dreams of becoming a New York mafioso in the late 1950s like Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill did, Butler’s bright-eyed Benny winds up a member of a ‘60s Chicago motorcycle club called the Vandals. Nostalgic narration moves this familiar story along, too, only it comes not from the main man, but Benny’s high-strung girlfriend, Kathy (Comer), who’s sharing her memories with a tagalong photojournalist (Mike Faist). “I’ve had nothing but trouble since I met Benny,” Kathy admits, in a thick South Side accent, of the somewhat enchanted evening she caught his eye at a biker bar.
Early on, elation and belonging bloom for Benny from escaping home and finally finding an intensely loyal group of friends led by the fearsome Johnny (Hardy). Later, good times crumble and a violent and dangerous reality emerges for the couple. You know the drill.
That join-rise-fall formula is an undeniably effective one. What’s noticeably missing here is any messiness. Based on the 1967 book of photos by Danny Lyon, the movie has the coffee-table quality of a series snapshots: deliberately curated, frozen, intriguing.
People die, of course, but “Bikeriders” stays oddly bloodless all the sam.
