'The Bikeriders:' Gritty look at biker life. friendship with great performances

Austin Butler is the face of “The Bikeriders,” but make no mistake, British actor Tom Hardy is the star of this fictionalized tale of the Outlaws MC motorcycle club.

Chameleon that Hardy is and always has been, he inhabits his role as the founder and leader of the club in the late 1960s. He gives a subtle performance layered with emotional resonance that’s honest in its simplicity and effective in the way it washes over the viewer in the midst of the film.

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Director-writer Jeff Nichols can thank Hardy for what is one of two superior aspects of this film. The other: Butler. The curse of the pretty boy will follow Butler as long as he’s making films. That’s part of the Hollywood game, but film fans underestimate Butler (“Elvis”) at their own peril. He comes extremely close to taking his brooding, bathed-in-danger good looks as Benny and matching Hardy note for note in this film that’s as much a study in America’s loss of innocence as it is in friendship.

The Vandals, as they are known in their Illinois neighborhood, are, for the most part, a social club where the members ride motorcycles. Of course, it’s more complicated than that innocent characterization, but when Johnny (Hardy) started the testosterone-fueled group, he did so with the intent of giving like-minded individuals a place and means to blow off steam.

Of course, blowing off steam involves alcohol, women and souped-up, chrome-plated, two-wheeled motorized monsters. There also exists a certain level of dysfunction as the group’s members view themselves as society’s outcasts. That belief gives way to a reality, however: their loud bikes and screw-the-world attitudes manifests itself in a perception on the part of the public.

The public views them as ne’er do wells and, well, things evolve.

Given the way they’re viewed by the public, they begin to embody the negativity associated with those perceptions.

Rough-around-the-edges, hard-drinking guys turn into a wild bunch who only answer to their internal set of rules, and with that lack of accountability, the corruption becomes palpable as the club expands and new members bring new ways that aren’t necessarily legal.

Johnny’s social club eventually swallows itself whole, providing a cautionary tale for the viewer.

Nichols crafts a gritty, compelling survey of biker history. Based on a book by Danny Lyon, who followed the club for a book of the same name, it’s told from the perspective of Kathy, Benny’s wife, an interesting choice.

Perhaps it’s done so to soften the scruffy, lawless image, but it doesn’t always work, occasionally bogging the film down. That isn’t enough, however, to diminish the experience. What does work: supporting turns from Norman Reedus and Michael Shannon, both looking and acting as if they were ripped from the scenes of the counterculture classic “Easy Riders.”

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“The Bikeriders” is hard to classify in that it isn’t a typical summer film, but there’s plenty to enjoy in watching it unspool.

George M. Thomas dabbles in movies and television for the Beacon Journal.

Review

Movie: “The Bikeriders”

Cast: Austin Butler, Tom Hardy, Jodie Comer, Michael Shannon

Directed by: Jeff Nichols

Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes

Rated: R for language throughout, violence, some drug use and brief sexuality.

Grade: B

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: 'The Bikeriders:' Gritty look at biker life with great performances