Butler's Cinema Scene

Austin Butler, Jodie Comer

“THE BIKERIDERS” My rating: C (Peacock)

116 minutes | MPAA rating: R

A staggering amount of talent has been squandered in “The Bikeriders.” 

Everywhere you look in this film there are familiar faces capable of great performances.  And behind the camera is the (usually) superb director Jeff Nichols (“Take Shelter,” “Mud,” “Loving,” “Midnight Special”).

Why, then, must we settle for half-baked armchair psychology and dramatic indifference?

Nichols here adapts Danny Lyon’s 1968 book, a collection of photos and interviews that were the result of four years the author devoted to documenting a Chicago motorcycle club.

The book has long been revered for its insights into the outlaw mentality of working-class men living on the edge of a society whose precepts they disdain.

Well, the film captures the bikers’ alienation (which after a while becomes wearisome), but never finds an effective narrative voice.  

Part of the problem is its structure. Most of the yarn is told in flashback.

In the early 1970s Lyons (Mike Faist) decides to follow up on the men he wrote about. Since most are unavailable (many are dead) he interviews one of the gang’s “old ladies,” Kathy (Jodie Comer), who married the charismatic James Dean-ish Benny (Austin Butler).

Comer here falls back on a ridiculous accent (she sounds like the lovechild of Cyndi Lauper and Snooki of “Jersey Shore”) to describe her whirlwind romance and her longstanding doubts about these boy/men and their self-absorbed toxic masculinity.

Among the bikers are the club’s brooding founder and president Johnny (Tom Hardy), the scruffy Zipco (Michael Shannon), the bug-eating Cockroach (Emory Cohen), the loyal lieutenant Cal (Boyd Holbrook), and a late arrival, the California biker Funny Sonny (Norman Reedus).

“The Bikeriders” features much of the partying and fighting but none of the fun we got from the old Roger Corman biker movies of the late ‘60s. It’s dour and sour.

Yeah, there’s some pleasure to be had from the period music and costuming. But if you can’t care about the characters, what’s the point?

Matt Damon, Casey Affleck

“THE INSTIGATORS” My rating: B- (Apple +)

101 minutes | MPAA rating: R

If Carl Hiassen had cut his writing teeth in Boston instead of Florida, he might have given us “The Instigators,” a caper flick about a couple of hapless doofuses involved in a heist gone wrong.

Written by Chuck MacLean and actor Casey Affleck (who also stars) and directed by Doug Liman (“The Bourne Identity,” “Swingers,” “Edge of Tomorrow”), this is an amiable action effort that refuses to take itself too seriously.

Rory and Cobby (Matt Damon, Affleck) are perennial losers (they’re just not very smart) who out of desperation agree to an audacious robbery planned by a couple of local criminal movers and shakers (Michael Stuhlbarg, Alfred Molina). 

The idea is to crash the election-night celebration of the town’s spectacularly corrupt mayor (Ron Perlman) and make off with several hundred thousand dollars in “campaign contributions” (actually bribes).

Of course nothing goes as planned. Our boys find themselves on the lam both from the authorities (an uncredited Ving Rhames plays the Mayor’s personal cleanup batter) and from a killer (Paul Walter Hauser) dispatched by their criminal bosses.

And along the way they pick up Rory’s psychiatrist (Hong Chau). Is she a hostage or there for therapeutic reasons?  Not even she seems to know for sure.

Anyway, there’s a good deal comic banter between Damon and Affleck as two schlubs in way over their heads, and several effective action sequences which manage to keep a light tone despite the mayhem. 

Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt

“THE FALL GUY” My rating: C+(On demand)

126 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Color me disappointed.

On paper “The Fall Guy” sounds damn near perfect…two of my faves (Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt) in a romantic comedy about a movie stunt man,  his director/love interest and the search for a missing movie star.

But David Leitch’s film (the screenplay is by Glen A. Larson and Drew Pearce), is mostly meh. I’m not sure whom to blame.

Veteran stunt guy Colt Seavers (Gosling) literally breaks his neck doing stand-in work for egotistical action star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson).  During his long hospitalization Colt becomes estranged from his girlfriend, cinematographer Jody Moreno (Blunt).

Now Jody is making her directing debut with a big Tom Ryder sci-fi epic. She’s too stubborn to ask old beau Colt to join the team, but her sneakily manipulative producer (Hannah Waddingham) has no such qualms.

And no sooner has Colt come on the set than he learns that the megastar Tom Ryder has vanished.  He’s told to sleuth out the mystery.

So  you’ve got a sort of detective story unfolding on a movie set, and that is intertwined with a romance as Colt and Jody gingerly find their way into each other’s good graces.

Well, it should work.  Two great stars, lots of insider jokes about the movie biz, some behind-the-scenes Hollywood insights…

But no, sorry. Not this time.

| Robert W. Butler