After a chance encounter, headstrong Kathy is drawn to Benny, member of Midwestern motorcycle club the Vandals. As the club transforms into a dangerous underworld of violence, Benny must choose between Kathy and his loyalty to the club.

Jeff Nichols latest movie, ‘The Bikeriders’, is his first in 7 years since both ‘Loving’ and ‘Midnight Special’, and as the title suggests, it is a movie about a motorcycle gang. In 1969 the film ‘Easy Rider’ portrayed motorcyclists as easy-going hippies, but those portrayed in ‘The Bikeriders’ are closer to the gangs of ‘Sons of Anarchy’, despite being set around 40 years earlier in the same era as the classic Dennis Hopper movie. Nichols has amassed a good cast, with Tom Hardy, Jodie Comer and Austin Butler headlining, with a supporting role for his regular collaborator Michael Shannon. The actors playing the parts all look like they belong in a motorcycle gang (with one exception, more on that later), and that lends an authenticity to the story that unfolds on screen.

‘The Bikeriders’ is loosely based on a true story from a photojournalist called Danny Lyon (who appears in the movie, played by Mike Faist), who travelled with a motorcycle gang called The Outlaws in Chicago (called ‘The Vandals’ in this movie). The gang is led by Johnny (Tom Hardy), a wearied leader who appears to be perennially worried about what might come next, not too dissimilar from other portrayals of paranoid leaders of criminal organisations. This is certainly something Nichols in trying to do, with the movie attempting to draw parallels between the motorcycle gangs and the mafia, in terms of how both types of organisations are male only, value machismo, strength and loyalty over anything else, and ultimately end up sucking the souls out of those who are involved in them.

Despite the strong cast I did have reservations about some of the leads, particularly Austin Butler and Jodie Comer who I struggled to get on board with in these roles. For Butler’s part, he could be a fine actor if he started actually acting instead of pouting – he’s shooting a movie, not on a model shoot. His performance took me out of the moment and I struggled to warm to his character as a result, while I could say the same for Jodie Comer, who is a terrific actress but not at her best here. Part of it is whatever accent she’s putting on here, but it’s mainly that she lays on the lost little girl shtick a bit too much and I found her a bit annoying to be frank. Tom Hardy is very good, as are the supporting cast, but Butler and Comer play key roles and it did diminish my enjoyment of the large stretches of the movie featuring them.

‘The Bikeriders’ is a solid enough motorcycle drama from Jeff Nichols, but from a filmmaker with such an impressive resume, I was hoping for something better after a 7 year wait.

Rating: 3/5

Directed By: Jeff Nichols

Starring: Jodie Comer, Austin Butler, Tom Hardy, Michael Shannon, Mike Faist, Norman Reedus, Boyd Holbrook, Damon Herriman, Beau Knapp, Emory Cohen, Karl Glusman, Toby Wallace, Happy Anderson, Paul Sparks and Will Oldham

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt21454134/