What interests Nichols most is the community that forms around motorcycles: the way that riding defines who the bikeriders areand brings them together. Their leather isn’t a fashion statement; it’s an identity. When a character says “You’d have to kill me to get this jacket off,” he really means it and, yes, he nearly gets killed.
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Nichols shares this interest in motorcycles as identity and affiliation with the photographer Danny Lyon. There’s a good reason for that. Nichols adapted “The Bikeriders” from Lyon’s celebrated photo book of the same name. Mike Faist (”Challengers”) plays him in the movie.
In 1963, Lyon started riding with the Chicago Outlaws motorcycle club, eventually becoming a member. (In the movie, the club is still in Chicago but now called the Vandals.) Lyon wasn’t your standard Outlaw. For one thing, he rode a Triumph. Also, he was a student at the University of Chicago and staff photographer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. His photographs of the club strike a rare balance between being on the outside looking in and outside looking out.
Many of the most eye-catching compositions in the movie come from Lyon images; and photographs from the book run alongside the closing credits. Along the way, there’s also a nod to “Easy Rider” and a clip is glimpsed from the ur-motorcycle movie, “The Wild One” (1953), starring Marlon Brando. Like Lyon balancing looking out and looking in “The Bikeriders,” Nichols balances the mythic and mundane in this version.
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The Vandals are rough and rugged and can be brutal. A few scenes are stomach-churningly violent. (Hey, Tom Hardy plays Johnny, their leader.) When the question “Fists or knives?” comes up, as it does with some regularity, it’s in no way rhetorical. But the Vandals are a club, not a gang, and that difference matters a lot. These guys work day jobs. Some have wives and kids. Hell’s Angels they’re not.
The movie starts in 1965 and ends in 1973, though nearly all of it’s set in the ‘60s. Nichols uses the first hour to set a mood, present characters, achieve a tone — or tones, which he shifts as fluidly as the riders shift gears. Even when nothing is happening, or not seeming to, this is a movie in motion.
That first hour feels like its own thing, vaguely familiar (motorcycles in movies carry inevitable associations) yet distinctly unpredictable. It’s a great open-road feeling. The second hour becomes conventional, even a bit plodding. It starts to feel like a movie — or, worse, bits of movies — you’ve seen before. Things get Talky and Serious and Emotional. Maybe Emotive is more accurate. There’s a funeral scene, and that may be a good time for a popcorn run.
Hardy lets us see why Johnny is unquestioned as Vandal in chief. He’s an iron fist clenched in an iron glove. Austin Butler (”Elvis”) plays Johnny’s number two, Benny. He’s the guy so attached to his jacket. With his narrow face and stubbly beard, Butler looks like a young (pre-ravaged) Tom Waits.
“I have to admit, it took my breath away,” his future wife, Kathy, says of her first glimpse of Benny. “Five weeks later, I married him.” It’s easy to understand what she sees in him. It’s even easier to understand what he sees in her, since she’s played by Jodie Comer.
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A motorcycle without an engine isn’t really a motorcycle. “The Bikeriders” without Comer would still be a movie, but a much lesser one. Anyone who’s seen Comer in the BBC series “Killing Eve” knows how good she is at flamboyance and going over the top. Here, playing a character altogether different — sturdy and a bit drab, the salt of a bitter earth — she’s every bit as good. What a great worried look those immense, wide-set eyes are capable of. The way Comer combines wariness and authority is phenomenal. It’s almost as phenomenal as her flawless Chi-cor-go accent.
The excellence of the accent matters, because whenever Comer’s talking, either on screen or in a voice-over, “The Bikeriders” isn’t just in motion. It’s going places. Filmically, voice-overs are a cheat, an extreme example of telling rather than showing, and this in a medium that’s all about showing. For once, Comer makes it all right to cheat.
“The Bikeriders” is a movie in which listening matters. It’s more than Comer’s voice or how effectively Nichols uses the sound of roaring motors. It’s also the fabulousness of the period songs assembled for the soundtrack by music supervisors Lauren Mikus and Bruce Gilbert. Performers include Magic Sam, Gary U.S. Bonds, Bo Diddley, the Staple Singers, Them, the Shangri-Las, Muddy Waters. The list goes on. During that terrific first hour, the music’s practically wraparound. It’s enough to make you feel bad for the bikeriders. Although we get to hear this music, their engines are so loud they can’t.
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★★★
THE BIKERIDERS
Written and directed by Jeff Nichols. Starring Austin Butler, Jodie Comer, Tom Hardy. At Boston theaters, Coolidge Corner, Kendall Square, suburbs. 116 minutes. R (language, violence, drug use, brief sexuality, more smoking than you’d get from a leaky exhaust)
Mark Feeney can be reached at mark.feeney@globe.com.
