Every glimpse of Austin Butler steals show in The Bikeriders
Not since Brad Pitt slunk into view in Thelma & Louise has the camera loved anyone as much as Austin Butler, writes Leigh Paatsch.
Leigh Paatsch
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The Bikeriders is a simple yet authentic tale about bikes in a time before they became outlaws, while A Quiet Place: Day One, in winding back the clock to explain the origins of the make-a-noise-and-die mayhem, has its own merits.
THE BIKERIDERS (MA15+)
Director: Jeff Nichols (Mud)
Starring: Tom Hardy, Austin Butler, Jodie Comer, Michael Shannon
Rating: ★★★½
Nothing lasts for revvers
No sooner have two minutes elapsed in The Bikeriders than one irrefutable fact is established.
There is no prettier person in motion pictures right now than Austin Butler.
The camera doesn’t just love the fella. It has designs in mind that are simply too impolite to be mentioned here.
Not since Brad Pitt slunk into view half-wearing those beat-up blue jeans in Thelma & Louise has such a value-packed consignment of guy-candy landed on the big screen.
If you walked away from Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis thinking the Butler did it, then you’ll be showing up to The Bikeriders so he can do it all again.
There’s just one loophole within all that fine-lookin’ fine print. The Bikeriders is not an Austin Butler movie.
It is a Tom Hardy movie in which every selective glimpse of Butler – either moodily looking into the distance, or recklessly speeding into it – steals the show.
Based on a classic book of photographs by Danny Lyon, The Bikeriders journeys back to a time when motorcycle gangs were yet to barrel through all ethical red lights towards a notorious new frontier of crime, death and destruction.
In some ways, the pioneering bikies of the early 1960s depicted here were holders of the same mythical maverick flame once held aloft by the American cowboy. Riding somewhere – anywhere – was a calling to a way of life that might have strayed outside the law, but came with its own code of honour nonetheless.
Writer-director Jeff Nichols frames his oil-slicked snapshot of the period around Johnny (Hardy), a former trucker inspired to swap 10 wheels for two after seeing Marlon Brando in The Wild One.
Across his native Chicago, other outsiders gradually join his chopper-propelled crusade: initially for races every weekend and, later, to congregate around the clock at whatever bar served as their temporary clubhouse.
The various members of Johnny’s gang – known as the Vandals – are a genial, if slightly dim bunch. However, they all look the part in their Vandals attire, and cheerily agree there’s no dispute that can’t be settled with a flurry of fists or the brief flash of a blade.
This time spent in Harley Davidson heaven can’t and won’t last. The seeds of discontent and dangerous intent that will later spawn the likes of the Hells Angels and worse take root in Chicago, and then go overground across the US.
Overall, it is a simple yet deceptively involving and authentic tale being told here, further enhanced (and possibly even glamorised) by the mystical presence of Butler as Benny, the fastest and most furious Vandal of them all.
The Bikeriders is now showing in general release
A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE (M)
Rating: ★★★½
General release
The first two A Quiet Place outings stand as two of the finer releases in mainstream horror across the past decade. With franchise creator John Krasinski and his regular cast no longer involved, you would think that Day One is doomed to disappoint. Think again. While not quite a match for its predecessors, this wilful winding back of the clock to explain the origins of all that make-a-noise-and-die mayhem is not without its own merits. Actually, once those enigmatic, silence-seeking aliens arrive in New York City to tear up and thin down the population, Day One gets worryingly engrossing very quickly.
Our guide through this down-with-the-decibel hell is Sam (an excellent Lupita Nyong’o), a terminally ill poet with an intuitive grasp of the new skills required to survive. While the narrative focus broadens to include Sam’s reluctant alliance with the skittish law student Eric (Joseph Quinn), the most memorable stretches of the movie are superbly anchored by Sam’s house cat, Frodo. Remarkably, the feline’s astonishing contribution is not the work of computers, but two four-pawed thespians operating in tandem. If you thought the dog in Anatomy of a Fall was the classiest animal actor around, well, now he’s got competition.
A FAMILY AFFAIR (M)
Rating: ★★
Now streaming on Netflix
It was only months ago we had The Idea of You, in which Anne Hathaway played a single mother of a certain age who takes a younger lover who just happens to be a major music star. It wasn’t bad. Now we have A Family Affair, in which Nicole Kidman plays a single mother of a certain age who takes a younger lover who just happens to be a major movie star. It is not very good at all.
Some of the failure can be ascribed to a fizzling chemistry of the leading lady and her lightweight love interest, Zac Efron. The rest of the blame lands with a sappy, sub-par script, which only serves up one quality scene of note (a genuinely amusing sequence where the clandestine couple are busted in the bedroom by the heroine’s suitably appalled daughter).
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Originally published as Every glimpse of Austin Butler steals show in The Bikeriders
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