MOVIE NEWS – Jeff Nichols’ film The Bikeriders is about a motorcycle gang in the Chicago area in the sixties, showing how a recreational club turns into a dangerous criminal gang in ten years. For the sake of historical authenticity, the director-screenwriter put a lot of emphasis on evoking the material world of the time, so the characters of the film raced on Harley-Davidsons from the sixties, which are now considered antique artifacts.

Anyone who was allowed to ride a motorbike by the production professionals, because those actors who are not suitable for this kind of fun, because they are vaccinated against it, so to speak, were not allowed to grab the steering wheel live, even during filming breaks , for your own pleasure. This was also the case with the female protagonist, Jodie Comer (Battle of the Obsessed), who could only crack in the saddle by holding on to the main character Austin Butler. The reason for all this was that the insurance company would not have taken such a risk to sign contracts for amateurs shooting in life-threatening situations, and without the appropriate insurances, a shoot cannot start according to the strict rules.

What’s more, Austin Butler himself (Elvis – Oscar nomination) was also revealed to have never ridden a motorcycle, the technical structure of the antique Harley-Davidson is so different from its modern vehicles that you practically have to learn how to ride a motorcycle all over again.And Butler definitely wanted to be authentic in the role, so months before the filming of The Bikeriders, he got on a motorcycle every day. Namely, in Budapest, where he filmed Dűne II: he escaped to practice during the breaks.

The world of The Bikeriders is so authentic that there are already misunderstandings: there are viewers who think they are seeing the story of a real gang come to life on the screen, that is you are dealing with a historical film that has been enriched with a bit of fiction. This is partly true, because Jeff Nichols reconstructed the counterculture of the sixties and seventies with deceptive accuracy based on a contemporary document, centering on a strange love triangle. The starting point was Danny Lyon’s report book published in 1968: the author was a member of a motorcycle gang for three years and recorded his experiences with fascinating photos and interviews. In the book, the life of the legendary Chicago Outlaws gang is brought to life, based on which the group of bikers in the movie, the Vandals, was born. By the way, the Chicaco Outlaws were founded back in 1935 in a tavern in Illinois, and its successor still exists today as a kind of tradition-preserving association.

The Bikeriders love triangle is Kathy (Comer), who is the narrator of the film, Danny, the young titan ( Butler) and the band’s founder-leader Johnny (Tom Hardy – The Returner), but the line-up is not what we would expect at first sight. It’s not two men competing for the woman’s favors, Kathy and Johnny want to win Danny for themselves. Kathy as a loving wife, and Johnny as a slowly retiring gang leader who chooses the young man as his successor, but he is not the type of person who wants to take on a position of responsibility, as he became a biker precisely because of his desire for freedom.

The Bikeriders, which was already presented at festivals last year, but is only now available due to the Hollywood strikes and the change of distributor, has an 84 percent rating on the RottenTomatoes review portal.

(The Bikeriders – domestic premiere: June 20, 2024.)