Jonah Naplan   June 22, 2024

Director Jeff Nichols’ “The Bikeriders” is a proudly masculine picture. It features attractive, muscular men with mega-loud bikes zooming around the neighborhoods of Chicago to pit stop at various bars and knife fights to flaunt their machismo. The filmmakers know full well that they’re working with a troupe of appealing movie stars who can capture our attention, and the movie stars sure are aware of this ability, too. None of them give especially profound performances, but the way they can command the screen with their flashy aura is just enough, and the camera swallows it all up. 

The film is at once a victorious battle cry for brotherhood and a documentary; a melodrama and a musical; a period piece and a fantasy. It chronicles the rise (and eventual fall) of a Midwestern biker club called the Vandals over the course of eight years, as adapted from the 1967 photography book of the same name, a compendium of stills and interviews collected by author Danny Lyon between 1965 and 1973 as he rode around with a real biker club and documented his experiences. Obviously, Nichols has taken some creative liberties with his film, and exaggerated/romanticized elements that may not have been as significant in the real story (certain scenes are clearly of his own invention), but he undeniably captures the essence of an era, using specific “old movie” tricks to fill out the atmosphere with pointillistic details—the look of the movie itself even has a “film-grain” feel to it, as if the tainted images of our protagonists were aged and worn long ago.

Lyon himself is portrayed by Mike Faist (who has recently become particularly popular among both teenage girls and boys after an admittedly excellent performance in Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers”), and his fictional interviews with Kathy Cross (Jodie Comer) are our humble window into this roaring world. Kathy is perhaps a little bit of an unreliable narrator of this saga, but she’s also the doting wife of Benny (Austin Butler), one of the distinguished leaders of the Vandals who doesn’t like playing by the rules and, Kathy explains early on, is a bit prone to crashing his motorcycle because of his ungodly speed. But he prides himself on the honor of being a part of the club, so much so that he’d rather die than shed his colors. In his first scene, a hunch-backed Benny is ordered by two men at a bar to remove his tattered denim jacket boasting the club’s logos, and upon refusal, the goons beat him up real good, nearly taking his foot off in the act. Benny is a slippery sort of fellow, sly and determined, but also dedicated and very sexy, key features that would have made Austin Butler a smashing star back in the 60s and 70s when movies tended to rely less on a large ensemble and more on one or two really solid performers to run the show.

Benny first meets Kathy at a janky bar owned by the Vandals in an erotically-lit early scene, kudos to cinematographer Adam Stone, that illuminates the actors’ faces as if to implicitly imply they’re destined for each other. You get the feeling from the very start that this is not a romance typically heard of. Each of them come from completely different worlds. She has just been reluctantly dragged by one of her girlfriends into this bar only to be disgusted by the sights: bare-chested men in biker gear, sweaty roughhousing, sensual looks from all around. He is used to all this ruckus, if slightly withdrawn from it all, because he’s been living with it for who knows how many years. They’re compatible because Kathy’s looking for someone edgy but not obnoxious, and Benny’s searching for someone soft but not completely naive.

The movie’s biggest shortcoming is its decision to sideline this romance for the better part of the second half because it’s perhaps the most intriguing narrative element of the whole film, especially as it begins to unravel and the two characters start to question whether it’d be best for them to go their separate ways. And yet, one of Nichols’ biggest triumphs is finding ways to mirror what’s happening between Kathy and Benny—the doubt, the regrets, the desperation to rekindle the spark that once was—with other Vandal members and their relationship with the club. In addition to this Tony/Maria romance at the film’s heart, “The Bikeriders” cements its “West Side Story” roots even further by filling out its ensemble with other scrappy, dangerous men searching for a purpose who echo the Jets when assembled together (there’s even an engrossing subplot involving a posse of younger, brutal, world-wearied Vandal wannabes led by a severe Toby Wallace—the “Sharks” in this scenario—who wage a sort of turf war when denied admission into the club).

Amidst this mob of outlaws is the handyman Cal (Boyd Holbrook), the scarred Brucie (Damon Herriman), a shaggy-haired European who frets about the Vietnam War—a real-world event happening during this time period that is curiously never really touched on; a missed opportunity—named Zipco (Michael Shannon), and an outsider named Cockroach (Emory Cohen) who was given that name because of his appetite for bugs (which he claims is only seen as vile by others because of their preconceptions of what “food” should look like). The integral leader of the group is a guy named Johnny (Tom Hardy), a wise but dangerous “family man” with a wife and two daughters at home, a possible soft spot in his heart that gives him a reason to stay alive and keep fighting.

Johnny built the club from the ground up, motivated by a lifelong passion for riding motorcycles. Of course, the Vandals have evolved into more of a mafia than just a group that sits around talking about bikes, but Johnny has become the king of the empire, the Godfather, if you will, issuing and enforcing acts of violence like he’d casually order a drink at a bar. Beyond how his character is merely written, Hardy even brings a Brando-esque aura to the role, maintaining a calm demeanor that hides so much rage under the surface (it’s certainly no coincidence that we’re told Johnny was also inspired to start the club after watching the actor in “The Wild One” on television). Like Brando, and like most of the supporting players, too, Hardy is fussing around with his character to give it that “old-timey” feel from the 40s and 50s when characters seemed grittier because of how they delivered their lines and moved about the frame. In a key scene, Hardy is asked what to do about a location crucial to the plot, and without hesitation—but with a sneering hint of “what the heck else are we supposed to do?”—he replies, “Burn it down.”

So much of “The Bikeriders” reckons with mean people doing meaner things because that seems to be the right (or only) move in a given situation. The version of Chicago it takes place in is not the liberal cityscape of businesspeople and journalists, but the rugged, hamfisted slums where crime and chaos run amok. Aside from a few scenes, the police seem to be largely out of the picture and are said to be, in fact, “scared” of Johnny and the Vandals. The neighborhoods these people live in are overlooked and run-down. We come to sympathize with these morally bad men because we get the feeling that they’ve been tossed around left and right their entire lives to the point of personal destruction. The movie speaks often of the idea that each member of the Vandals tends to be scared when out alone, as if individual vulnerability is the overwhelming fear. But when they’re together as a unit, they feel safe, not just because they’re all armed with fists and knives but because the intellectual support between members is strong. One memorable scene, in particular, holds Johnny ridiculing and then dismissing another character for so abruptly leaving his friends behind, like he’s a schoolteacher berating a selfish student who has not allowed his other project partners to do any work just so that he can get the gold star. We can see clearly that these people are not just “colleagues,” as it were, but brothers.

In this way, “The Bikeriders” is an examination of gnarly souls who look tough and unforgiving on the outside but are broken and lonely on the inside that is simultaneously fascinating, at times convoluted, and very, very entertaining. Jeff Nichols takes an ambitious approach that is at once admirable and sometimes too pretentious for its own good, but in the end he stews up a pot of delicious comfort food. You can imagine Sondheim and Lyon himself chowing down on it with a smile.

Now playing in theaters.