‘The Bikeriders’ Film Review: A Potent and Brooding Biker Drama

American Cinema’s love affair with the biker culture started with László Benedek’s 1953 film, The Wild One, starring Marlon Brando. The actor’s legendary performance would set the tone for young rebels on screen and off. In Jeff Nichols’ terrific new picture, The Bikeriders, Tom Hardy’s Johnny gets the inspiration to form a motorcycle club from watching Brando in Benedek’s iconic film.

Telling the saga of a biker gang called the Vandals, Nichols’ latest is based on a 1968 photo book by photographer Danny Lyon. From 1963 to 1967, Lyon existed amongst the Chicago chapter of the Outlaws motorcycle club, where he documented the outlaw-biker lifestyle with honesty and respect. Writer-director Nichols takes the audience along on Lyon’s journey, in this episodic film that oozes mood and authenticity.

The Bikeriders is told in flashbacks as Danny (Mike Faist) interviews Kathy (an excellent Jodi Comer), the girlfriend of brooding Vandals member Benny (Austin Butler). Kathy’s stories of her time with the Vandals paint an intimate saga of a motorcycle club that was a tight family who looked out for one another, but one that began to crumble under the weight of crime and violence.

Beginning in 1963, Hardy’s Johnny is a truck driver who decides to start a racing club for motorcycle fanatics that eventually becomes a bigger gang. As the years go on, the Vandals morph from their tight club into a nationally chartered organization. All of this happens in the face of Johnny’s determination to keep it a familial brotherhood, though the criminal element is beginning to overshadow anything else.

Leaving behind a normal life, Kathy takes up with the Vandals after becoming girlfriend (and ultimately, wife) to Benny (Austin Butler), the most brooding of all the Vandals. While The Wild One sent leader Johnny on the path to a lifestyle of chrome and hell-bent leather, it is Benny who embodies the essence of Brando’s character. Benny has no clear path, as he rides through life with no thought of his future and rebelling against everything he can find. Butler’s performance could be mistaken as overly mannered, but the actor has the type of swagger that comes from a natural place. With his wind-blown hair, sleeveless biker jacket, and almost mythic presence, Butler’s intensity burns off the screen.

Jeff Nichols’ screenplay makes sure the other members of the club get their due, with each role well-cast and given a proper chance to build a personality. Cockroach (Emory Cohen) is a member so named because he eats the bugs that hit his face when riding. As their later years find the gang going deeper into criminal activities, Cockroach wants out to pursue his dream of becoming a motorcycle cop.

While Damon Harriman’s Brucie (Johnny’s second in command) deserved more screen time, the two most interesting supporting characters are Ziplo (Michael Shannon) and Cal (Boyd Holbrook). Ziplo is a biker who has tried to live the normal life, but cannot exist unless he is amongst his biker brothers. Taken almost verbatim from Danny Alton’s real-life interviews, Shannon’s monologues are a high point of the film.

Cal is a mechanic whose joy comes from working on bikes and being a member of the Vandals. Holbrook has always been a one-note actor, but Nichols gives him something deeper to work with beyond his usual villainous role. Through the actor’s sweet performance, Cal is the heart of the film.

In a film loaded with human drama and spurts of jarring violence, The Bikeriders finds its gripping core in Kathy and Johnny’s fight over possession of Benny’s soul; a love triangle, if you will. Strong-willed Kathy wants him out while Johnny needs him to be his successor. It is here where both Comer and Hardy do some of their best work. In a scene where the two have a sit down in the Vandals’ bar, the actors play the moment subtly, but with dramatic precision. While Kathy is in danger of losing her cool and holds her cigarette like a dagger, Johnny stays calm and direct. Hardy is fascinating to watch here, as Johnny uses a precise diction to stress the importance of Kathy recognizing his rule. The power in this moment is fueled by two actors at the top of their skills.

After showing range in her award-winning turn on the television series Killing Eve, Comer has been in search of the right role. Kathy is that role, and while her Chicago area accent is sometimes too strong, the actress gives a nomination-worthy performance.

Once again, Tom Hardy proves that he is the Marlon Brando/Monty Clift of his generation. Grasping the profundity of Johnny as a man who cannot move forward into his club’s darker future, Hardy does his strongest work since 2014’s The Drop, as the actor cuts through the macho exterior. A father with two families, Johnny doesn’t split his loyalties. Wife. Kids. Vandals. He is the patriarch of them all. Hardy portrays Johnny as a man being swallowed by his own creation. The violence that is seeping into the Vandals is becoming a cancer inside him. Hardy keeps a tough persona, but his eyes give the audience a glimpse into a man unsure of his future. This is a skilled and striking performance by one of our best.

Director Nichols’ goes beyond the mythology of motorcycle culture and creates a film about belonging. From the Vandals to Kathy, each character is aloof in regular society and migrates to Johnny’s club to be a part of something familial. It is on Johnny’s worn face where we see the eyes of acceptance for this band of wandering souls, as a feeling of camaraderie gives them all a lifetime bond.

Like the characters who populated the Westerns of John Ford and Howard Hawks, the biker culture of the 60s and early 70s articulates a generation’s desire to make its own mark in a changing country. But Johnny’s ultimate goal for the Vandals would be a freedom they would never attain. Small-town America was scared of people who looked and thought like Johnny, Benny, and the rest of the Vandals. and it was the counterculture’s willingness to embrace and express a want for freedom that scared the hell out of the older generation.

As was Easy Rider 54 years ago, The Bikeriders is a paragon of rebellion and of men who realize their utopian vision of this country could never come to fruition. In the film’s unexpectedly moving final moment, it is only the faint roar of an engine keeps the dream of freedom alive.

As Roger McGuinn sang in the song The Ballad of Easy Rider, “All he wanted was to be free / And that’s the way it turned out to be.” This is the simple nugget of truth that becomes the soul of Jeff Nichols excellent film.