‘THE BIKERIDERS’
IN THEATERS 6/21.
“On one side of masculinity, you have tropes, you have a lot of toxicity, you have things that are aggressive and dangerous. But on the other side of masculinity, you have things that are really romantic and beautiful and alluring. And there’s a tension between those two things. And this film holds that tension.” That’s how Little Rock native filmmaker Jeff Nichols described the thematic preoccupations of “The Bikeriders” — his sixth feature-length movie about the tumultuous ascent of a fictional ’60s Chicago-area motorcycle gang — at an Arkansas Cinema Society press junket back in October. At that point, the film was set to come out in December, but promotional challenges due to the SAG-AFTRA actors’ strike pushed the release date to June 21. Taking inspiration from a 1968 book of black-and-white photos by Danny Lyon that shares the same name as the film, Nichols uses his biggest budget so far to stylishly capture a spirited subculture on the brink of extinction, with three magnetic leads — Jodie Comer, Austin Butler and Tom Hardy — to boot.
