Rating: R | Runtime: 116 minutes
Release Date: June 21st, 2024 (USA)
Studio: Focus Features
Director(s): Jeff Nichols
Writer(s): Jeff Nichols / Danny Lyon (book)

You are an undesirable character … we don’t want you.

People weren’t joking about Jodie Comer’s midwestern accent in Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders. It’s a real slap in the face after watching a violent opening scene that ends with Austin Butler’s Benny getting a shovel to the back of the head. You get used to it, though—you must considering the entire film is dictated from her words. Yes, it leads to a few funny line readings and its “aw shucks” nature lends an offbeat juxtaposition to the horrors that unfold, but that’s kind of the point. Because this isn’t “Sons of Anarchy”. Not at first. This is a story of outcasts coming together to drink beer and commiserate. The rest comes later.

And yet it’s no mistake that Kathy’s (Comer) introduction to the Vandals begins with a feeling of unease as Wahoo (Beau Knapp) and Corky (Karl Glusman) make her increasingly uncomfortable before club president Johnny (Tom Hardy) makes things worse with a promise to protect her that sounds more like a threat. We’re supposed to think these guys are hardened criminals. Killers. Rapists. We’re supposed to because that’s the stereotype society has placed upon them. But while the Vandals might eventually succumb to those generalizations, they’re initially just harmless idiots having fun, Men who wouldn’t hurt a fly unless provoked (or, in the case of Emory Cohen’s Cockroach, hungry).

The script is balanced upon two interviews inspired by Danny Lyon’s book. Lyon (played by Mike Faist) is both recording these bikers’ anecdotes while entrenched in their club during the 60s and a sort of debrief with Kathy to discover what happened to everyone after he left in the 70s. She’s our narrator talking about the ways in which she let herself be taken in by this ragtag family via her love and eventual marriage to Benny. She tells us about her husband’s insane loyalty, Johnny’s stoic leadership, and the good times hanging with the likes of Zipco (Michael Shannon), Brucie (Damon Herriman), Cal (Boyd Holbrook), and Funny Sonny (Norman Reedus). And she remembers how it all fell apart.

Is there a traditional story in play? No. (Surely a reason why 20th Century Studios dropped it right before its originally planned release.) One could say it’s a “love story” as far as Kathy and Benny are concerned, but Butler isn’t on-screen nearly as long as you’d think. It’s more of a historical fiction about motorcycle clubs and how the public’s misunderstood perception inevitably warped them into becoming the gangs we know them to be today. Sure, there’s fighting and drinking in those early days, but there’s also a level of respect and brotherhood that trumps the noise. Then Vietnam ends, soldiers return home, and the “guidelines” to which members are bound become “rules” that cannot be broken. Soon guys like Johnny become dinosaurs to kids (Toby Wallace) that don’t respect anything.

There’s an honesty to that evolution that only a filmmaker like Nichols can capture. He’s breathing life into Lyon’s photos by giving three-dimensional form to the smiling characters captured within. And by letting someone like Kathy be their mouthpiece—someone who loved them—we can see a side of this life that pop culture rarely allows these days. It’s messy and often brutal, but also filled with hope until the world shifts to take it away. It’s about loyalty and fraternity being destroyed by entitlement and power. Because when Big Jack (Happy Anderson) challenges Johnny, it’s to settle a dispute with honor. When Johnny gets challenged again, it’s solely about fear and control. All good things must die.

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Austin Butler in THE BIKERIDERS; courtesy of Focus Features.