The Bike Riders

By Joanna Langfield

Jeff Nichols’ film may cruise along on its familiarity, but a fine group of actors still rev things up.

Drawn from a young journalist’s real life series of interviews, we are introduced to the Vandals, a motorcycle group that began in the Midwest back in the early 1970’s.

There’s Johnny, the leader, Benny, the anti-hero, Brucie, Johnny’s right hand man, the vulnerable Cockroach, the mysterious Funny Sonny and then there’s Zipco. Nobody quite knows what’s the story with him. But our perspective on it all comes from Kathy, the nice girl who gets drawn in and, eventually marries Benny. She not only shares the details, but the personalities of what has become her pack. And the parallels to mob mentality and behavior, while maybe not so obvious to her, sure are to us.

And maybe that’s why this isn’t a more shattering, more impactful movie than it is.

Some of us may remember the stories of developing gangs of riders, how they rode, and pretty much terrified parts of the country. And there are some groups still intact today, so this history does shed some light as to the origins and behavior. But maybe because of those mob-ish ties, which have been made into far more compelling films by stronger directors, this one just feels kind of muted.

What does work very well are the performances. Austin Butler doesn’t get a whole lot to do, but his James Dean light take does the trick. Michael Shannon, in his few scenes as Zipco, is better than his material, as usual. Mike Faist is kind of wasted as chronicler Danny but then there’s Tom Hardy, tremendous as Johnny and Jodie Comer, whose Kathy steals the whole shebang. Comer makes us want an entire movie all about Kathy, but then again, maybe this movie accidentally is just that.