"THE BIKERIDERS" (2023) ** OUT OF ****

Danny Lyon's 1968 photojournalistic book about a Chicago biker club inspired "Mud" writer & director Jeff Nichols to make "The Bikeriders," starring Austin Butler, Jody Comer, and Tom Hardy. This nostalgic but lackluster, 116-minute epic chronicles the evolution of the fictitious Vandal's Motorcycle Club from its origins in the 1960s to the 1980s. Nicholas pays tribute to Martin Scorsese's classic Mafia crime thriller "Goodfellas" (1990) with the pervasive use of flashbacks, a gabby narrator, and patch work of character interviews to forge an ethnographic portrait of early biker subculture. Although Nicholas humanizes these counter-culture ruffians, letting then chew the scenery about themselves, the film seems to start and stall out and it never maintains sufficient headlong momentum. "Midnight Special" cinematographer Adam Stone, who has shot many of Nichols' films, lenses scenic long shots of these bikers as they cruise through sun-drenched, mid-western America. You can savor the spirit of freedom they bask in on these open roads. Nevertheless, the spectacle of these steel horses cannot compensate for the dire lack of drama. Mind you, gearheads and car-geeks will drool over vintage bikes and cars. Several bikers die tragically. Like Wyatt (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper), the cross-country heroes exploring America in "Easy Rider," the Vandals suffer fates nobody could foresee. One biker who swears he would die first rather than shed his colors capitulates at fadeout. Nobody is really happy long in this journey from one era to another.

"The Bikeriders" shares little in common with those genre-flavored exploitation biker pictures that followed the 1969 success of "Easy Rider." Primarily, Nicholas illustrates the origins of this Chicag0-based club. While watching the iconic black & white biker saga "The Wild One" (1951) on a small television in his family living room, trucker Johnny (Tom Hardy of "Venom") decides to launch his own bike riding club. Whenever anybody wants to challenge his leadership, Johnny promises to give them a chance to topple him. Eventually, Johnny buys a bar and holds meetings there with suds flowing. He installs a phone so anybody who gets arrested or injured in a fight can contact club members. Occasionally, we see Johnny and his followers rumbling through Chicago's concrete canyons in an impressive display of bikers riding in formation. The sight of these noisy choppers growling like mechanical lions captures the heart of a discontented twentysomething who shares Johnny's aspirations.

Meantime, the second protagonist is Benny (Austin Butler of "Elvis"), a quiet loner who would rather die than shed his colors. The opening scene in "Bikeriders" depicts the danger of wearing colors in a hostile setting. Benny suffers grievously at the hands of two obnoxious blue-collar thugs. The scene is brutal, perhaps the most visceral in the film, and Nichols reprises this gripping scene later. Watching that scene unfold when Benny refuses to forsake his colors looks like something in "Easy Rider." This is the show-stopping scene in a film that lacks narrative focus. Basically, Benny, Kathy, and Johnny amount to triangular protagonists. Benny and Kathy are an amorous couple, while Johnny is Benny's best friend. Meantime, a gallery of fascinating characters jabber about their exploits, but we rarely see them doing anything more than drinking and boasting. Occasionally, fights break out, but Johnny doesn't line up any kind of genre style enterprise, such as selling narcotics or robbing businesses.

"The Bikeriders" amounts to an inventory of scenes that resemble excerpts from a photo album. The chief drama here is Johnny's fateful decision to turn over the club to someone else since he lacks the vision to take it beyond a social group. The Vandals neither stick up convenience stores nor banks. They don't molest citizens, etc. Benny's worse crime is evading the police during a high-speed chase. They capture him because he runs out of gas! The early Vandals reminded me of Boy Scouts compared to those psychotic cretins that followed in their footsteps. Nicholas indulges in a peripheral kitchen drama when he introduces the chief villain, the Kid (Toby Wallace of "Dark Frontier"), who hails from a broken inner-city home. His father beats his wife without mercy. Repeatedly, the frustrated Kid approaches Johnny about joining the Vandals. Johnny rejects him twice. Eventually, the Kid challenges Johnny. Meantime, Nichols explores the lopsided romance between Benny and Kathy (Jody Comer of "The Free Guy"), with Kathy talking about them during her interviews. Largely speaking, "The Bikeriders" is filtered through Kathy's eyes. Most traditional biker movies are told from a male perspective, but everything here has a feminine slant. More often than not, these interviews feel like repetitive commercials that interfere with the flow of the action.

Mind you, the cast is impressive. As the Vandals' head honcho, Tom Hardy rules his riding club with a passion. Indeed, Hardy gives a marvelous, Marlon Brando-infused performance. After Benny is beaten down at a bar, Johnny and his riders destroy. Spectators stand in a crowd around the bar with firefighters and watch it go up in smoke. Benny emerges as Johnny's closest confidante, but he refuses to replace Johnny as the Vandals' leader. Most of the picnics that the Vandals have amount to garrulous, booze-fueled, gripe sessions. Michael Shannon has a wonderful scene where he explains how he was rejected for military service because he was branded "an undesirable." Ultimately, little about "The Bikeriders" qualifies as either nostalgic or dramatic. Not only does Benny refuse to be the leader, but he also lets Johnny and the Vandals down by not punishing the Kid. Altogether, "The Bikeriders" leaves you feeling indifferent about the fate of these hellions.

"THE GLADIATOR" (1986) MADE FOR TELEVISION *** OUT OF ****

 Any movie veteran director Abel Ferrara of "Bad Lieutenant” fame helms is worth watching at least once, and his competently made-for-TV revenge melodrama, "The Gladiator" proves no exception to this rule. "Wiseguy" star Ken Wahl plays the hard-bitten protagonist, and he delivers a sturdy performance. As older brother Rick Benton, Wahl struggles to raise his younger brother, Jeff (Brian Robbins of "C. H. U. D. II: Bud the Chud") without their parents. He decides to coach Jeff about how to drive since the lad has landed his learner’s permit. Buckling up and cruising out into Los Angeles traffic, Rick reminds the fifteen-year-old to obey the rules of the road. Suddenly, out of nowhere, for no apparent reason, a sleek, black, 1969, Dodge Charger, looking souped up and sinister as a phantom, careens in behind them. After the aggressive Charger rams Jeff twice, the youth accelerates in a desperate effort to elude the homicidal driver. Sadly, Jeff speeds through an intersection, and a semi-truck smashes into him. Not surprisingly, Jeff dies, while Rick wakes up a couple of days later from a coma. Now, our embittered protagonist embarks on a self-appointed mission to track down this anonymous felon known only as “The Skull.” With the help of his long-time buddy Joe Barker (Stan Shaw of "Daylight"), Rick relies on his genius as a custom car designer to modify his two-door, pick-up truck, installing stronger suspension and heavier bumpers as well as equipping it with a police band radio. He searches for the murderous motorist who wheels around town deploying savage “Ben-Hur” blades that telescope from his front hubs during his death dealing escapades. Sometimes, this madman terrorizes other drivers for nothing more than either accidentally bumping his car or he careens up behind them and plows into them, running them off the road.

Meanwhile, an overworked detective, Lieutenant Frank Mason (Robert Culp of "Hickey and Boggs"), has little success with the case. After he recovers from the accident, Rick sits in on a support group of people who lost family members to drunk drivers. Initially, Rick suspected the dastard who brought about the death of his brother was a drunk. Later, he comes to the realization that this isn't the case. Here's the deal, however, the genuine  culprit of this above-average, television quickie doesn't abuse alcohol! Instead, he is a hopeless psycho who preys at random on innocent, unsuspecting victims. By this time, Rick has begun a relationship with a late-night, radio talk show host, Susan Neville (gorgeous Nancy Allen of "RoboCop"), who juggles phone calls from a variety of listeners that are split along the lines of whether the self-professed "Gladiator" as Rick dubs himself is either a vigilante or a menace to society. Inevitably, he emerges as a celebrity in the sense that he patrols the roads to dissuade  drunken drivers from swerving across lanes and killing people. Finally, Rick manages to thwart this madman during a climatic, slam-bang, demolition derby in an automobile junkyard. Moments before this showdown, Rick had phoned Detective Mason and identified himself as the "Gladiator." Like Michael Winner's "Death Wish" starring Charles Bronson, Rick takes it on himself to find his brother's killer. Unlike Bronson, Rick succeeds in bringing the lawbreaker to justice. Unfortunately, not only do we never get a glimpse of this fiend, played by professional stunt car driver Jim Wilkey, but also we never learn what fueled his road rage. For the record, Wilkey drove some of the vehicles in "Mad Max: Fury Road!" This is the only flaw in an otherwise white-knuckled thriller. Although it is a made-for-TV movie, Ferrara never lets the momentum stall in this gripping 94-minute tire shredder of an epic. Interestingly, Ferrara’s film was initially supposed to unspool on the big screen instead of television.