On my way to my screening for The Bikeriders I was listening to the Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend podcast when the former late night talk show host discussed a recent cliche in movies and TV shows where the first thing audiences are shown is the main character in a dangerous or exciting situation to get their attention then going backwards to explain how we got there. Funnily enough that exact situation played out in The Bikeriders, as the movie begins with a scene where Austin Butler's Benny gets into a fight with two other men over wearing his motorcycle club jacket before going catching the audience up the story leading up to that.
Whether or not that is truly becoming an overplayed storytelling technique or not, the real problem with The Bikeriders employing it is that the movie never reaches that kind of excitement again. Now, the Jeff Nichols movie is not trying to be The Fast & the Furious, as it is perfectly content with being a more thoughtful chronicle of a period of change in America within the context of motorcycle gangs.
