In The Bikeriders, we have the return of Jeff Nichols, a director whose steady hand was behind several great films from the 2010s, including Take Shelter and Loving, his previous film. It’s been eight years since Loving, a movie that encapsulates the subtle intensity of his narratives. The lack of commercial success in his filmography, along with his understated style, may have played a part in his absence. The Bikeriders may be the most mainstream film of his career, a star-studded affair with period dress and an epic scale. The script is inspired by a Danny Lyon photography book of 1960s motorcycle clubs, and the various characters are based on bikers that Lyon interviewed at the time. But the film is mostly the creation of Nichols, who shows his soft touch with prickly characters once again.
The Vandals in Chicago began as a motorcycle racing club, the brainchild of Johnny (Tom Hardy), who saw Marlon Brando in The Wild One, and came up with the idea. One of the Vandals’ most devoted members is Benny (Austin Butler), a loose cannon who speaks little but never hesitates to throw a punch – or draw a knife. When the no-nonsense Kathy (Jodie Comer) walks into a bar populated by Vandals, she’s immediately turned off of the grease-stained, beer-chugging debauchery that she encounters. But when she sees the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Benny at the pool table, wordlessly radiating 1960s cool, she begins to reconsider her feelings. “Five weeks later, I married him,” she tells Danny Lyon (played by Mike Faist) years later. Most of what transpires comes from Kathy’s put-upon recollection.
What begins as a local club expands into chapters across the Midwest. As the membership grows, rivalries brew, and Johnny finds himself unable to control the monster he created. He turns to Benny, his closest friend and confidante, for help. But Benny is torn between his loyalty to the Vandals and his commitment to Kathy, who swears that the biking life will lead to Benny’s demise. The Vandals are filled with grimy characters, including the ornery Zipco (Michael Shannon), the rambunctious duo of Wahoo (Beau Knapp) and Corky (Karl Glusman), the California-based wild child Funny Sonny (Norman Reedus), and the baby-faced Cockroach (Emory Cohen) who got his name because he likes to eat cockroaches. This central group of eccentric misfits originally formed The Vandals to find acceptance in an intolerant world, but the gang quickly morphs into an institution of violence too unwieldy to control.
Nichols’s script is a mixed bag of good and bad Scorsese pastiche. Kathy’s narration along with the circular flow of Julie Monroe’s editing will recall the memorable beats of Goodfellas, as well as the overall rise-and-fall arc of the narrative. The Bikeriders‘s complicated journey to theaters speaks to the movie’s unsettled tempo. Originally slated for a December release in 2023, the movie was pulled from the calendar soon after the SAG strike began, before it was dropped overall by 20th Century Studios. It was Focus Features that resurrected the film in time for a Summertime release. This is a movie filled with exquisite style, filled with specific period detail heightened by Nichols’s assured filmmaking talent. But its narrative is muddled, torn between which character it wants to be its protagonist.
Jodie Comer, the star of the television show Killing Eve, is finally getting her moment in films. She may be the most technically impressive actor of her generation. Eve showed a preternatural talent for accents, and Bikeriders allows her to flex that muscle. Kathy speaks in a whirring Chicago squeal that feels both from another world and then natural once you’re into it. It’s a choice meant to draw attention to itself before proving a necessary addition to the character. This is probably Comer’s greatest talent: her ability to make obstinate technical choices while still making her characters feel rich and lived-in. Her Kathy is easily the best part of The Bikeriders. A movie that in many ways is critiquing the masculinity at the heart of these violent clubs, it desperately needs her feminine perspective. That Comer also makes a meal out of Kathy only makes the performance that much more incredible.
If Comer leans into accents seamlessly, Tom Hardy charges forward, bull-in-china-shop. His Johnny speaks likes a 1930s caricature, a new addition to Hardy’s obtuse figures of menace. Butler, whose had his own adventures with accents in Elvis and Dune: Part Two, instead settles for grumbling, enigmatic ferocity. The contrast between them highlights the success of Butler’s look, which exudes dangerous sensuality, while also highlighting Benny’s unknowability. When Benny becomes the central figure in the conflict between Johnny and Kathy, Benny’s mystifying persona becomes a detriment, as his character refuses to show his cards. That our three stars are taking wild adventures with voice performance is interesting in and of itself, even if it doesn’t always add to the film.
For a filmmaker who began his career as a precise curator of Southern gothic tales, The Bikeriders is a project of great ambition for Jeff Nichols, whose promise of greatness still feels very prevalent, though he’s been a round too long to still be riding on what he can do going forward. This doesn’t reach the existential majesty of Take Shelter or the contemporary mythology of Mud; even the meditative realism of Loving feels like a more successful venture. But this is an incredibly exciting exercise in style. Every scene, successful or otherwise, feels imbued with intentional creative choice, free of the thoughtless of so many other Hollywood films. One can understand how 20th Century Studios didn’t see much money in this movie, but I’m glad Focus gave it a proper release. It’s important that studios invest in competently-made narratives for adults.
Written for the Screen and Directed by Jeff Nichols