June 24, 2024 · Watch the official trailer
Everything about Jeff Nichols’ new film feels vintage.
It isn’t just that his latest drama is centered in the 1960s with period clothing, faded and weathered cinematography, and firmly implanted in a bygone era. There’s a cinematic quality in a “they don’t make movies like this anymore” sensibility to “The Bikeriders,” a nuanced, slow-burn, episodic drama, that allows some of Hollywood’s best chameleons to sink their teeth into fully formed characters.
Inspired by a photo book following on a Midwest motorcycle gang in the 1960s, “The Bikeriders” is a wonderful amalgamation of Americana culture, filmmaking styles of the 1970s, and cinema that just allows the aura around its performances to radiate off of the screen.
Somewhat surprisingly, the film revolves around a young woman, Kathy, who struggles to immerse herself in the world of her boyfriend Benny’s motorcycle club and its father figure leader Johnny. As the club grows over the course of a tumultuous 1960s, Kathy must compete with Johnny for Benny’s waning attention.
From the opening moments of the film, audiences will clearly know that they’re in for something special and not what they’re used to seeing in theaters these days.
Austin Butler arrives on screen in the early moments with a gravitas easily likening to Steve McQueen or, more aptly, James Dean as a younger rider refusing to take off his colors and the ways in which it sets the stage for the film’s more nuanced, introspective take of a lesser examined segment of 1960s America is utterly phenomenal.
While the upstart actor is best known for encapsulating Elvis Presley, his work here as Benny is equally as transfixing and the charisma that he exudes naturally on screen with a strong, yet subtle physicality and quiet cadence to his vocal performance makes it clear why Kathy and Johnny are equally enamored with him for wildly different reasons.
It’s a performance on which the entire film hinges as Benny creates the needed balance of an erstwhile protagonist of the film, yet Nichols and Butler develop a masterful distance that feels just out of reach for audiences and other characters in the film, as if Benny is more legend than he is man.
Conversely, Tom Hardy as the gang’s leader Johnny attempts to be more stoic than he’s capable of as Hardy portrays the character almost as if he’s pretending to be the leader of a motorcycle gang that someone like Marlon Brando would inhabit rather than actually living the life out fully.
This creates a slightly jealousy and more demonstrable awe in Hardy’s turn as Johnny, with the character essentially seeking a platonic closeness to Benny in order to be freer and more rebellious by association.
Ever the subtle actor, Hardy slowly and methodically reveals this side of Johnny through character work instead of broad stroking the relationship, furthering the ways in which Johnny and Kathy essentially vie for Benny’s time.
Jodie Comer bridges the gap between audiences and the club with a commanding performance on par with her two male counterparts, something rare for a film in this genre but in the same ways Comer more than held her own against Adam Driver and Matt Damon in “The Last Duel.” Comer melts into the part of a midwestern ingenue and gives her far more gravitas than other actresses might in the same role.
Because this film is inspired from a photo book, iconography plays an important role in “The Bikeriders” as the way the bikers are staged, framed, and clothed creates a larger-than-life visual to match the singular images of the book.
Cinematographer Adam Stone brilliantly lights and shoots the cast to such a masterful degree that individual frames of the film feel ripped straight out of the pages of its inspiration and there’s a flawed, almost fractured nostalgia and sentimentality to the visual world Stone and Nichols create in the film.
“The Bikeriders” debuted in cinemas far too soon to be strongly considered come awards season, although this is clearly the type of film that could do well if it lands deserved nominations for Butler, Comer and the iconic cinematography and other technical aspects.
Although moderately paced and somewhat lacking in plot, “The Bikeriders” has a kinetic vibe, an effortless coolness to its narrative that makes the period drama something ardent cinephiles should seek out on the big screen.
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