‘The Bikeriders’ Review: Jeff Nichols Rediscovers The Motorcycle Gang Code With Superb Cast Led By Jodie Comer, Austin Butler & Tom Hardy – Telluride Film Festival
deadline.comBiker movies are almost a subgenre of films unto themselves, beginning with Marlon Brando’s The Wild One in the early ’50s and then through all those AIP exploitation titles of the ’60s including The Wild Angels, Hells Angels on Wheels and many more, notably Tom Laughlin’s predecessor to Billy Jack called Born Losers, all culminating with Easy Rider with Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson, which became the Citizen Kane of biker cinema.
It has been awhile since we have seen a major big-screen return to the world of biker culture, but with Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders, which had its world premiere Thursday at the Telluride Film Festival, this long-lost era is back.
But its filmmaker has distinctly different ideas and motives in reviving it. Basically, Nichols tells a period story set in the ’60s and ’70s world of the earlier efforts but applies contemporary themes of identity and loyalty and the need to belong in a world increasingly isolating us as individuals.
On top of that, The Bikeriders is more in line with movies that Martin Scorsese has made such as GoodFellas and Mean Streets, films that pulsate with vivid characters, music and graphic violence.
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