"The Bikeriders" - Review

The rise and fall of the Vandals motorcycle club is told by Kathy (Jodie Comer) to a photographer and aspiring journalist Danny (Mike Faist, always welcome), chronicling their beginnings under founder and leader Johnnie (Tom Hardy), her meeting with hotheaded Benny (Austin Butler) and the path the Vandals took from the 60s into the 70s...

I like Jeff Nichols as a filmmaker, and have missed him. He tends to have a good eye for the great American Fairy Tale, much with "Mud" and "Midnight Special" (the latter an incredibly underrated road movie), and recapturing older genres less glamorous and mainstream than the ones usually marketed and hyped. Here is a period piece rise and fall which does pretty much what you expect it to do from the trailers, with the added and welcome narrative device of Faist and Comer in their interviews, the two pulling it off well and it adding some spice to the movie. It tackles the mythology and fantasy of Biker Gang iconography, and is carried by its central performances: Hardy is always good, here with his tough guy swagger and posturing, but also playing the character as having watched one too many Marlon Brando movies and trying to imitate that cool as a family man (a welcome twist on the tale and adding some much needed humanity), it's a part he can play in his sleep. Butler is good too. But the movie belongs to Comer: she's the star of it, despite the trailers skewing the marketing to the more "lads friendly" Butler and Hardy, and she's great in this. Really good even. The supporting parts are aided by some memorable and lovable character actors: Nichols stalwart Michael Shannon plays "Zipco", the enigmatic weirdo who hates "Pinkos"; Boyd Holbrook is the laid back "Cal", who ends up in a fun little arc with the scary California newcomer Sonny (Norman Reedus) and Beau Knapp pops up too! Plus it's a Jeff Nichols movie, so I was waiting for the Paul Sparks cameo and it's good!
It does what it says on the tin, and has some nice attention to detail with the period pieces, costume design and props, and the photography is as pretty as ever (I prefer "Midnight Special", but hey ho! Not the movie's fault - very different beasts!). It's carried by the performances, and if you think you'd like it from the trailer, you probably will. The point when you know it's going to turn into darker territory could have been darker in my eyes, but I'm just a mean spirited bastard like that.
Yeah, it's good.
Plus, if that's your thing: Tom Hardy wrestles a man in mud, and he and Butler spend the entirety of the film in denim, leather or denim and leather.