Jodie Comer, Austin Butler, and Tom Hardy Vroom Into One of the Best of 2024 So Far
DIRECTOR: JEFF NICHOLS/2024
Some love stories are about a girl meeting a boy—others are about a girl meeting a biker gang.
Just outside Chicago in 1965, Kathy (Jodie Comer) meets Benny (Austin Butler) when she stops by the Vandals motorcycle club’s bar. The Vandals, which sprung from Johnny’s (Tom Hardy) imagination after watching Marlon Brando scowl through The Wild One on his tiny living room television, will soon will creep its way across the Midwest to become a presence in the lives of working class men looking for their place in mid-century America. This pugnacious group may not be looking for trouble, but they always seem to find it, and as they enter the ‘70s, it becomes more difficult to separate their friendship from criminal behavior. There to document it: Danny Lyons (Mike Faist), who photographs and interviews them across their road trips, capturing the cultural changes of the 20th century as well as the battle between Kathy and Johnny for Benny’s soul.
Part of me thinks reviewing The Bikeriders is like a man critiquing Pride and Prejudice: Who cares what you think? This wasn’t made for you! The latest feature from Jeff Nichols is a history of fragile father-son relationships, emotionally stunted masculinity, and a toxic brotherhood, so in many ways, this was very much not made with me in mind. But two months after seeing it, the film is still revving through my brain, and no one else at ZekeFilm wants to write about it. Lucky me.
The Bikeriders is less about plot and more about vibes, so if you’re hoping for an action thriller spectacular, it may be a letdown. Arson, murder, and police chases do pepper the Vandals’ activities, but writer/director Nichols is basing this story on Lyons’s book of photography, so his film is less like a novel and more like a mood board. (Less Ghost Rider, more Easy Rider.) I’m sure you can find an article outlining fact versus fiction in this interpretation of Vandals lore, but this isn’t it—honestly, I don’t care much. This movie is memorable not because it’s a docudrama revealing a little-known story but because of the nuances it finds in well-trod Hollywood subject matter all the way through to its ambiguous ending.
Narrating the history of the Vandals isn’t Johnny, Benny, or even Danny, but outsider-looking-in (and frequent dissident) Kathy. Her wide eyes observe every movement in the group, and her thick Midwestern accent can recount a whole decade of violence that made for a silly waste of time and lives. Her descriptions of Johnny’s patrilineal obsession with Benny are akin to Diane Keaton recounting the succession saga of The Godfather, but it’s also much funnier from her point of view. Perhaps our decades of brooding cinematic men would have been less maudlin if their wives were providing perspective all this time.
That said, Nichols also knows how cool guys in leather jackets look while smoking and riding motorcycles even as we know they’re dangerous clichés. Nearly every ocher-tinged frame is, well, frameable, which makes me wonder if more films would look this pleasing if we based more off of mood boards than novels. (Between this and Twisters, the landscapes of the Midwest are having a moment this summer.) Nichols also knows it takes someone as gorgeous as Butler to make us believe the skeptical Kathy would sell her soul to have him. It’s as if Austin Butler overheard Robert Redford say, “Paul Newman and I are the handsomest white men who have ever been on screen,” to which he growled, “Hold my comb.” While that’s not as important as his talent as a performer—excellent as a stoic, detached James Dean-type and believable as a frustrated, volatile Montgomery Clift-type—he understands what Pauline Kael wrote about in her review of Bonnie and Clyde: “It is a supreme asset for actors and actresses to be beautiful; it gives them greater range and greater possibilities for expressiveness. The handsomer they are, the more roles they can play…Actors and actresses who are beautiful start with an enormous advantage, because we love to look at them.”
Kathy’s (and even more so, most of motorcycle gang’s) decisions are terrible, but every character’s need to belong in this boys’ club feels so authentic you can’t help but get swept up by them. Tom Hardy is Tom Hardying harder than he’s ever Hardied before (perhaps uncovering his face unleashed the full Hardy?), Butler is cementing his movie star status, and Comer is revealing a comedic side I never would have guessed from her in The Last Duel. Also with memorable supporting performances from Mike Faist, Boyd Holbrook, Norman Reedus, Michael Shannon, and Toby Wallace, The Bikeriders one of best films of the year so far.