It’s a gripping scene, one invested with pristine period detail meant to provide a snapshot of a culture and the aura of a man. When Nichols’ film works best, it’s acting in that two-handed fashion. Taking cues from photographer Danny Lyon’s same-titled book, itself inspired by Lyon’s infiltration into the Chicago Vandals biker club from 1965-73, Nichols’ study falters whenever he forgets the man at the center of this subculture. “The Bikeriders” is a film of aesthetics hoping to summon the spirit of a moment by looking and sounding the part without ever feeling it. 

It first stumbles by lacking a clear center. Nichols opts for Kathy (Jodie Comer) to be our way into this world. Lyon (Mike Faist), who records her interviews throughout the film, first catches up with her at a laundromat in 1965. She recalls one night when a girlfriend dragged her out to a bar owned by the Vandals. She arrived conventionally dressed in white Levis and a purple sweater. This salty bar filled with seemingly crude men all dressed in leather and denim biker vests, some without shirts, some with earrings—isn’t exactly her vibe. She wants to leave until she sees Benny standing at a pool table. The picture slows to the speed of heavenly molasses, and cinematographer Adam Stone’s honeyed lens captures Butler trying his damndest to be James Dean—and nearly succeeding. Like the viewer, Kathy is immediately attracted to what Benny represents: Freedom. 

Kathy is an outsider to this society, flummoxed by its rules, rituals, and politics. We learn very little about her other than she lives in a prototypical Midwest brownstone with a working-class husband, who Benny scares off after he sits across their home with his bike during the night. Before long, Kathy introduces us to the rest of the club: The level-headed Brucie (Damon Herriman), the gear-head Cal (Boyd Holbrook), an unstable Latvian angry that he couldn’t go to Vietnam named Zipco (Michael Shannon), the bug-eater nicknamed Cockroach (Emory Cohen), and more.  She also recalls the lore of Johnny (Tom Hardy) founding the gang after watching Marlon Brando in “The Wild One” and the reality of the club simply springing from his love of racing. Either way, Johnny, who works a 9-5 job that we never see and has a wife and two children, is like many of the other men introduced through gorgeous tableaux and direct addresses. He wants to belong somewhere, and the post-war dreams of white picket fences mean very little, if anything, to him. Like Kathy, he sees the freedom he craves in the volatile loyalty of Benny—a man who will jump into a fray against Indiana bikers without any further details if he sees his brothers in trouble.