Tom Hardy and Austin Butler’s ‘The Bikeriders’ Is So Sexy It’ll Leave You Sweating
In The Bikeriders, Tom Hardy and Austin Butler play motorcycle gang bigwigs who are so preternaturally cool that smokey, sweaty charisma seems to be seeping out of their pores. Every drag of a cigarette, swig from a beer bottle, and rev of their steel horses’ engines exudes a potent degree of manliness. So overpowering is their machismo that when they ride into a Midwestern small town, the sight of them in the morning sunlight is enough to compel a two-bit crook to stop stealing hubcaps and gaze at their majesty—and, subsequently, to embrace his own inner tough guy by smashing a mouthy citizen’s car headlight.
Writer/director Jeff Nichols’ first feature since 2016’s Midnight Special and Loving, The Bikeriders, which hits theaters June 21, is loosely based on Danny Lyon’s 1967 photography book of the same name. Consequently, it’s far more interested in conjuring a mood and an attitude than it is in telling a proper story. There’s only the wispiest of narratives to be found in this period piece, which thrives on the back of its evocative imagery, an era-faithful score by David Wingo, and lead turns from Hardy and Butler that are all about laconic and brash poses. Unabashedly romanticizing its subjects as paragons of strength and style, it doesn’t have much substance lurking beneath its surface—but then, with a surface like this, it doesn’t really need any.
Set between 1965 and 1973, The Bikeriders concerns the Vandals, a Chicago motorcycle club founded and led by Johnny (Hardy), a hulking bruiser with a scruffy face, slicked back hair, and a nasally voice. Johnny isn’t a man of many words but when he speaks, he does so with menacing authority, and he’s inspired to start the gang after watching Marlon Brando in The Wild One—an anecdote that, told in hindsight narration, lends the material a mythological art-imitating-life-imitating-art element. His original members include reliable right-hand man Brucie (Damon Herriman), mechanic Cal (Boyd Holbrook), disheveled Zipco (Michael Shannon), jokey duo Corky (Karl Glusman) and Wahoo (Beau Knapp), and goofy Cockroach (Emory Cohen). Most striking of all, however, is Benny (Butler), whose origins are a mystery and whose love of riding—and disinterest in convention and commitments—makes him the embodiment of outlaw biker culture.