Jodie Comer, Austin Butler, Michael Shannon, Mike Faist, Norman Reedus, Tom Hardy
Austin Butler, Michael Shannon, Jodie Comer and Tom Hardy lead an all-star ensemble cast in The Bikeriders, the latest from writer-director Jeff Nichols (Loving, Midnight Special, Take Shelter, Mud). An exhilarating, full-throttle period drama, it’s derived from Danny Lyon’s 1967 photography study of bikers in the Midwest and pays clear tribute to classic films (The Wild One, Easy Rider) exploiting the iconic mid-century cool of the motorbike as a potent and very American symbol of individual freedom.
Inspired by the Outlaws MC, the Chicago-based motorcycle club Lyon’s book captured, it follows the inner world of fictional club ‘the Vandals’. Seen through the lives of its members – chiefly storyteller Kathy (Comer), smouldering Benny (Butler) and melancholic Jonny (Hardy) – we follow the club over the course of a decade, as a love triangle spools out and newcomers join the Vandals, infusing the club with a new ethos antithetical to its founding members’ original intentions and prompting an intense power struggle. Lyon features too, with Mike Faist playing the young photographer snapping portraits of this charismatic crew.
