Credit writer-director Jeff Nichols, a half-dozen features into his career, with staying out of the Franchise Wars. At least two films on his resume, the sublime 2011 eco-psychological thriller Take Shelter and 2016’s Midnight Special, fall squarely within the sci-fi/paranormal adventure space. In the years since, he was attached to follow-ups to A Quiet Place and Alien Nation—a little-remembered 1988 curiosity that starred James Caan and Mandy Patinkin as human and alien buddy-cops, respectively! (Neither came to fruition.) But instead of making those mooted sequels or reboots or brand extensions, Nichols has stubbornly continued to tell original stories.
His latest, The Bikeriders, is essentially Hogfellas, albeit with a bit less meat on the bone than that comparison would indicate. With Jodie Comer’s Kathy—who falls hard for Austin Butler’s taciturn biker Benny—as its narrator, the film follows the Stones-at-Altamount arc of biker gang “the Vandals” devolving over the course of eight or 10 years from a mere public menace (albeit one that occasionally commits arson) into a violent criminal enterprise of hard drugs, sexual assault, human trafficking, and murder.
The Bikeriders is a work of fiction, though it was formally “inspired by” Danny Lyon’s 1968 photo book of the same name. (In a statement in the film’s production notes, Nichols calls it “the coolest book I’d ever come across.”) Mike Faist even appears in the film as Lyon, though he has little more to do than point a camera or a microphone at Comer or Michael Shannon and say, “What about [name of person]?” a half-dozen times. One of these scenes is set in 1973, five years after Lyon published The Bikeriders, which must be why Nichols gave Faist a line saying, in effect, “I just wanted to come talk to you again to find out what happened to everyone I profiled.”
Nichols is interested in exploring what binds people to charismatic leaders—that would be Tom Hardy’s Johnny, the Vandals’ aging, enigmatic chief—and the virtues and limitations of tribalism in an era that was arguably as turbulent and factionalized as the one we’re living in now. The film is explicit: Johnny’s inspiration to form a “motorcycle club” came from watching The Wild One on television. (Like The Bikeriders, that Marlon Brando-starring 1953 biker flick was a work of fiction inspired by a piece of journalism: a 1951 Harper’s Magazine story called “Cyclists’ Raid.”)
Besides his lodestar Shannon, who has appeared in all of his films, Nichols has rounded up some of the coolest character actors of recent vintage to play the grizzled members of the Vandals: Boyd Holbrook. Norman Reedus. Damon Herriman, so memorable as a lunkheaded ne’er-do-well on the great F/X series Justified. Toby Wallace makes a strong impression, too, as the leader of a younger group of bikers eager to join—or displace—the old guard.
Comer’s Chicagoland accent is dead-solid perfect. Hardy, as is his wont, has affected a vocal timbre native to no place on this planet; Butler is still playing Elvis. (With that dreamy midcentury mug of his, could the star of Masters of the Air and Dune Part Two ever be in a film set on present-day planet Earth? I am aware that he has, in fact, already done this. It was a rhetorical question.) But no one can say that Butler and Hardy don’t look good straddling Harleys, which seems to be the point.
While I can appreciate that the moment is right for a film exploring a pugnacious subculture, it mainly seems that Nichols and his actors were seduced by all the exterior stuff: the motorcycles; the denim, leather, and grease; the accents; the convincing recreation of 1960s Illinois. (The movie was mostly shot in Cincinnati.) The Bikeriders is no chore to sit through, it just doesn’t have the spark of originality that has animated Nichols’ strongest work. It’s a good film from an artist who’s shown us he’s capable of great ones.
The Bikeriders (R, 116 minutes) opens in theaters nationwide on June 21.