Film review: In ‘The Bikeriders’, the birth of a subculture on two wheels

Still images have been a source of wonder and mythology in film Jeff Nicols.

“Mud,” Nichols’ Twain-soaked Mississippi fable, seemed derived from the magical vision of a boat suspended from a tree. “Loving,” about a 1960s interracial marriage, it was inspired by tender Life magazine photos taken of the real-life couple. Nichols’ latest, “The cyclists”, is based on the photographer Danny Lyon’s 1968 book of the same name, for which he spent four years at a Chicago motorcycle club.

It’s not hard to see what Nichols saw in Lyon’s black and white photos. There are the elegant raw materials – the chrome bicycles, the slicked-back hair, the black leather jackets. But there is also an anti-authoritarian and comradely spirit that has just emerged. Like the central figures of “Loving,” they are classically drawn outsiders who encapsulate something glorious and uncomfortable about freedom in America.

In the thrilling first half of “The Bikeriders,” which opens in theaters Friday, Nichols is less compelled to build a narrative around his motorcycle gang, the Vandals (based on the Outlaws), than to conjure up an intoxicating atmosphere. reminiscent of those old photographs. “The Bikeriders” eventually becomes weighed down with heavier plot mechanics — you can almost feel its riders getting tired of having to strap narrative devices to their bikes. The film wants to pedal, but it’s not sure how much story to take along for the ride. But this is a vivid dramatization of the birth of an American subculture.

The framing device Nichols chooses is Lyon himself, played by Mike Faist, who is conducting interviews for his book. His conversations with a woman named Kathy ( Jodie Comer ) ends and sporadically narrates the film.

Kathy, also based on a real person, seems at first glance an unlikely spokesperson for the gang. She speaks with a thick Illinois accent (an acting distraction) and has no affection for bikers. But one night, in a bar, she sees Benny (Image: Disclosure) Austin Butler ) on the other side of the smoky room and, even if she doesn’t admit it at that moment, she falls in love with him. Again, it’s not hard to see why. Butler is now very far from Elvis Presley but the flexibility with which he manages to penetrate mid-century America is no less apparent. Benny takes Kathy home, parks his bike outside, and waits patiently for her boyfriend to leave town.

Nichols, a devotee of films like “Hud” and “Cool Hand Luke,” is a filmmaker who works very consciously within classic American idioms. In Butler he has his James Dean, making Tom Hardy his Marlon Brando. Hardy plays Johnny, Benny’s best friend and the one who starts and presides over the Vandals. (Brando’s “what’d you get” clip from “The Wild One” is seen briefly on a small TV in “The Bikeriders.”)

The Vandals, as a club, start as simply as children would call up a treehouse to ask for. They’re a bunch of guys who like riding motorcycles and talking about them. That simple. But men come like moths to the flame, drawn by the tough lifestyle, the cool patched jackets and a departure from mainstream America. Among them are Cal (Boyd Holbrook), Cockroach (Emory Cohen), Funny Sonny (Norman Reedus) and Zipco (Michael Shannon).

“Obscenity and motorcycles go hand in hand,” says someone proudly.

The group’s first days are, it seems, a lot of fun. Bar fights and carefree strolls through cornfields. Most of these guys don’t have much, but they have each other. And their loyalty is total.

Kathy isn’t so sure. She watches the growing gang – an all-male group – with skepticism and fear for Benny. (In a scene teased in the film’s opening, he is beaten badly enough to be hospitalized.) Sometimes they throw themselves on the ground just for fun. They are the original Fight Cub.

But soon Kathy isn’t the only one with doubts about what they’ve created. As their gang grows, what the Vandals stand for becomes less clear, even to Johnny and Benny. Some of the new participants return directly from Vietnam. His old antics give way to more serious crimes. In a punishment scene, Kathy was almost attacked by her limbs. The gang – and their entire stance of resistance – begins to look more like a trap, even for their leader. Benny is faced with a choice between the Vandals and Kathy. The homoerotic subtext is downplayed but not ignored; When Benny and Johnny discuss their future together, they do so gently and intimately, in the dark, like a secret confession.

As the Vandals’ original ideals disintegrate, it can feel like “The Bikeriders” gets stuck in a familiar structure similar to “Goodfellas,” but with a telling change in narrator for a drama that is ultimately about masculinity. This is a film that juggles many contradictory ambitions. It wants to be authentic, but it wants to tell a great American saga. He wants mythology, but also naturalism. It was these instincts that made Nichols one of the most essential filmmakers of his generation, even if the results were sometimes underwhelming. Even his best, most grounded films (“Take Shelter,” “Mud”) strive for a balancing act that can be elusive.

But I think it’s those dual impulses – and, again, all the cool jackets – that make “The Bikeriders” work. The film is unabashedly romantic about the vandals, but it’s equally dubious about the rugged masculinity they embody. “The Bikeriders” keep their hands firmly on the gas, only braking.

“The Bikeriders,” a Focus Features release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for language, violence, drug use and brief sexuality. Running time: 116 minutes. Three stars out of four.

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