Jodie Comer as Kathy and Austin Butler as Benny in The Bike Riders. Photo / supplied
Jodie Comer as Kathy and Austin Butler as Benny in The Bike Riders. Photo / supplied
MOVIE REVIEW: Now that he’s played Elvis, a bomber pilot in Masters of the Air, the hairless psychopath from another galaxy in Dune 2, and a 1960s biker, Austin Butler is doing wonders for his action-figure franchise. His doll dress-ups are cooler than Ken’s.
The Bike Riders is the storyof a Chicago motorcycle club that went from weekend rebels to inter-gang warfare in the mid 1960s to early 1970s. Butler is silently surly, pouty and photogenic in his denim and leathers as Benny, the wild one among the “Vandals”, an unruly mob led by Tom Hardy’s Johnny.
It’s an episodic saga, thin on plot, but evocative in period detail and for its romanticised affection for the milieu and biker films of the past – The Wild One and Easy Rider are referenced directly, and there’s something very Marlon Brando about Hardy’s delivery throughout.
The film gets its horsepower from its three lead performances, led not by Butler or Hardy but by Jodie Comer (Killing Eve) as Kathy, the girl who turns Benny’s head, and once married to him, learns to tolerate her husband’s self-destructive streak until she can’t any more.
Other than the roar of all those Harley-Davidsons, her flinty voice is the film’s main sound, acting as a narrator in a series of interviews about the Vandals’ history to photographer Danny Lyon (Mike Faist) for a book. An actual book from the era by the real Lyon inspired director Jeff Nichols’s script and the final credits display some of its photographs.
The film is something of an album itself, a series of often violent vignettes, and minor character studies featuring some very good performances from the wider ensemble. They don’t quite cohere into anything deeper. But in the way it brings a subculture to life, this movie about blokes on big Harleys is a small triumph.
Rating out of 5: ★★★½
The Bike Riders, directed by Jeff Nichols, is in cinemas now.
