Review: The Bikeriders

Director: Jeff Nichols

Stars: Austin Butler, Jodie Comer, Tom Hardy

“You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain”. The oft-touted Batman comics quote almost inevitably comes to mind while watching The Bikeriders, Jeff Nichols’ welcome return after what feels like a lifetime (he last gifted us two films in 2016; mid-tempo sci-fi yarn Midnight Special and misty-eyed social justice period drama Loving). Indeed the gap has felt so long that much of what made Nichols a special voice in American cinema feels faded, making this movie a welcome reminder of his surreptitious powers. Nichols deals in a dignified brand of blue collar Americana, and rarely has it felt as earthen and lived-in as here.

Based on Danny Lyon’s book of anecdotes and photographs charting the lives and escapades of a motorcycle club between 1965 and 1973, The Bikeriders envisions its motley crew of outsiders as rebels and rejects from society, brought together through a shared passion for something benevolent and ideological. But, as time eclipses its original members and the blowback from Vietnam rolls across the country, what began as a rejection of institutions becomes too large and unruly; a new, hostile establishment of its own. Like so many rebellions, it is ultimately brought low by in-fighting and a watered down version of its original ethos, where power and mayhem subsumes a more intrinsic desire for freedom.

It is told – a little oddly – by an outsider to an outsider. Mike Faist plays Danny Lyon, interviewing longtime biker wife Kathy Cross (Jodie Comer) about her years witnessing the antics of the Chicago Vandals; a motorcycle gang led by the stout, no-nonsense Johnny (Tom Hardy) and featuring her heady beau Benny (Austin Butler) as its chief charismatic wildcard. Butler shot to fame a couple of years ago playing ’50s icon Elvis Presley for Baz Luhrmann, but here he channels one of that decade’s most equally-enduring stars; James Dean. Benny has the heat and the temperament, and Nichols has him photographed in such a way that he threatens to burn right through the screen.

Much as Butler smoulders, it’s his co-leads who do much of the heavy-lifting. Both Comer and Hardy chew their way around thick accents, bringing to bear layered and believable characters that carry with them almost Shakespearean weight and complexity. Kathy talks herself up, that doesn’t take any shit, but flashbacks reveal that this isn’t always the case, particularly when pack mentality outflanks her. Whenever this tough cookie starts crumbling, The Bikeriders dims like a guttering flame around her. Hardy, meanwhile, puts forward one of the best performances of his career. Johnny is just as enamoured with Benny as Kathy is, and the confusion wrapped up in this urge for intimacy presents as a strained, unacknowledged homosexual tension. A mid-film overture between the two in near darkness is the most intensely erotic that the picture summons. Nichols – never a particularly sexy filmmaker – lets the scene play out hot under the collar and unresolved.

For the most part The Bikeriders masquerades as a crime saga film, ala Goodfellas, when its most comfortable mode is as a nostalgia hangout movie. Dazed and Confused with cycles and switchblades. You’ll learn more about bikes from Furiosa. No, Nichols’ interest is in how these men interact and cut loose. The camaraderie that comes from the posturing, the beer-drinking and the often ephemeral sense of bucking authority. The gang mentality does buckle over into violence and lawlessness on numerous occasions, and Nichols doesn’t soften this, but he’s more keen to explore kinship and its slow erosion than the drift into organised crime that comes later.

The supporting cast is an embarrassment of riches, from Nichols mainstay Michael Shannon (playing weird for Nichols for maybe the first time) to the salty likes of Damon Herriman and Boyd Holbrook. Norman Reedus shows up half-way through, keen to mug in a set of grotesquely tarnished dentures, while even smaller parts are given over to the memorable likes of Will Oldham and Paul Sparks (familiar to most, probably, from Boardwalk Empire).

Nichols’ disinterest with what biker gangs in American became grows a little self-evident in the final stretch. The Bikeriders sort of shrugs across the finish line, observing with some resignation that the good times never last, folding those halcyon days into an America more innocent before the decade-long blow-out of the ’70s. But, when its firing on all cylinders, Nichols’ film taps into a free-spirited romanticism that celebrates the fundamentals that keep these boys riding together.

It was incredibly easy to underestimate Nichols, especially since The Bikeriders has suffered some serious delays getting to us – suggesting a lack of confidence somewhere behind the scenes – but the result is an overdue revival for one of modern cinema’s most dependable purveyors of American folklore. Here’s hoping the engine keeps revving and we don’t have to suffer another stall of seven or eight years.