The Bikeriders
The boys are back in town in The Bikeriders, Jeff Nicols’ take on 1953’s The Wild One
The Bikeriders is a thrilling and sentimental tribute to Americana, male bonding, and the type of freedom that only a motorcycle and the open road promises. It’s also a tribute to Hollywood. After all, biker gangs are as American as apple pie: their iconic image brings to mind iconoclastic films, from Easy Rider to Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising.
In a small, Midwestern town, Austin Butler is Benny, a bad boy with a heart of gold. Butler takes his Elvis swagger and moulds it into something edgier and more gravelly, laced with a gentleness that wins over Kathy, played with wide-eyed pluckiness by Jodie Comer, our spunky narrator. But the real love story isn’t Benny and Kathy's, it's the homosocial brotherly bond between Benny and Johnny (Tom Hardy, doing his best Brando impersonation).
Cinema is littered with the history of tough-yet-soft boys like Benny and Johnny bonding together against the harsh reality of the mean streets – think West Side Story, The Warriors, The Outsiders. Just like The Bikeriders’ cinematic predecessors, nothing gold can last. Through Kathy’s flashbacks, we see the gang’s devolution from a misfit's refuge into a viper’s nest of toxic machismo and violence for violence’s sake. It's a story we’ve seen done before but there’s a delightful joy in taking part in the familiar ritual, a cinematic tale as old as time aided by nostalgic needle drops – from the Shangri-Las to The Animals – that will send shivers down any cinephile's spine.
Released 21 Jun by Universal; certificate 15