The Bikeriders

3.5 Stars

By Joseph Beyer | June 29, 2024

If American cinema has a genre all its own, it might be The Motorcycle Movie. With iconic influences like The Wild One (1953), Easy Rider (1969), and Hell Ride (2008) as inspiration, the long-awaited and chrome-infused drama The Bikeriders has finally roared into theaters, adding nicely to the canon.

And while the 1-hour-56-minute work of fiction distinguishes itself from the pack, it also pays homage to all the themes you’d expect and want: bad boys on the edge of society rebelling together as a gang, thundering chopper sounds that roar through you, unwilling damsels in distress caught between their men and their bikes, and the brooding good looks of a leading rebel with a cause.

If you need any reassurance it will be a wild R-rated ride, the film opens with a young mysterious drifter sitting alone at a bar who utters under his breath, “You’ll have to kill me to take this jacket off.” And he means it. That loner is Benny, played by actor Austin Butler.

Butler, fresh off the fame of playing Elvis Presley last year in Elvis, somehow manages to channel another icon here in his brooding reinterpretation of legend James Dean, who famously commanded the screen with his eyes and sparse dialogue.

Butler succeeds again in creating a character who says little but whose presence is felt every time he’s on screen. Benny has some anger management issues but finds his “family” in the Vandals Motorcycle Club in Chicago, a ragtag group of middle-aged white men longing for freedom from their predictable lives.

The unlikely leader of this pack is Johnny, a quiet but terrifying presence played by Tom Hardy. Johnny has created the Vandals to escape middle-class boredom, but what starts as a social club becomes more menacing as a criminal enterprise driven by fights between rivals, tests of loyalty, and acts of revenge. In Benny, he sees a protégé who can build on what he’s started and protect it. The two have a special bond that sometimes borders on erotic, and together they form the heart and soul of the gang and will defend it at all costs.

The only thing standing in the way (of course) is Benny’s girl Kathy, a goody-two-shoes who reluctantly gets pulled into the biker lifestyle when she falls for his brooding charm. Kathy suddenly finds herself at the center of the Vandals and is stuck between Benny’s love for her and his loyalty to the gang. It will put her on a collision course with Johnny, who demands more and more from Benny as the gang expands … and the doomed love triangle is formed.

The story takes place circa the 1960s, and the film is loosely based on a photography book of the same name by Danny Lyon who documented a real-life motorcycle gang in the Midwest between 1965 and 1973. On screen, Lyon is portrayed by actor Mike Faist (having a moment after his turn in the recent hit The Challengers), who lurks in the background like an interviewer and asks all the right questions at the right time.

His focus with lens and microphone is Kathy (as played by actress Jodie Comer), who narrates the story in a series of semi-soliloquies and monologues that often drift into the performative and leave her exposed on screen to do the best she can with them. Her scenes with other actors are the most successful, but the confessional convention becomes weary.

Writer and director Jeff Nichols has faithfully captured a time and a place and an insightful mood here that is often riveting. And yet the wheels come off too many times for absolute perfection, and ultimately The Bikeriders leaves you with an experience in need of some grease.