Directed by Jeff Nichols | Written by Nichols, based on the book by Danny Lyon | 116 min | ▲▲▲▲△ | Amazon Prime

I was entirely tempted to give this movie an extra little triangle up there, my highest rating, because it floored me in about a half-dozen ways. It stays at four because it didn’t quite stick the landing in terms of resolving one of the key relationships, which left me with just the slightest disappointment. Otherwise, this is a powerfully told American story of masculinity and violence — I can imagine Martin Scorsese nodding with recognition in the dark while watching The Bikeriders.

Loosely based on a book about an Illinois biker gang and set in the 1960s and ’70s, it’s framed by a series of interviews by the author and photographer, Danny (Challengers‘ Mike Faist), with Kathy (Jodie Comer) talking about how she met and fell in love with Benny, (Austin Butler, smouldering), who’s the biggest outlaw in The Vandals, a Chicago-area gang that was started by Johnny (Tom Hardy).

It’s entirely clear from the start that this gang is peopled by misfits, men (and occasionally their wives) who don’t have much else going on but are desperate to belong to something, to feel some small sense of power. Johnny is the only one of them who has a job and a family. There’s a great scene where we see him watching The Wild One with Marlon Brando, which explains and justifies Hardy’s loose Brando impersonation for the whole movie, the slightly whiny voice and inarticulate expressions.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s Hardy’s best performance in ages — his psychology is as compelling as anyone’s in the movie.

But, yeah, these guys are all kinds of pathetic, and that’s the undercurrent of this entire enterprise. Kathy explains it early on — they joined the Vandals because they couldn’t follow rules in a normal life, and the first thing they do is learn to follow a bunch of rules. Her attraction to Benny brought her into the group, even as she resents that it’s kind of lowered her class.

The club is populated by characters we get to know a bit —like the amiable Cal (Boyd Holbrook), California biker with awful teeth, Funny Sonny (Norman Reedus), and harmless weirdo Cockroach (Emory Cohen).

Director Nichols — much missed in the eight years since his busy 2016, where he had both Loving and Midnight Special — finds a slight supporting role for his favourite actor, Michael Shannon. His Zipco gets a terrific monologue about the Pinkos of America — the problem with the country, from his perspective, is college boys who wear tennis shoes. As far as he’s concerned, if you don’t earn your living with your hands you’re not worth shit, and the blue-collar values of this organization are writ large in his attitude — which is funny since so many of these guys don’t appear to actually do anything with their time.

Everyone admires Benny because, as Kathy explains, he’s the only one who really doesn’t care — all he wants to do is be in The Vandals. Butler is set up as the protagonist, but actually disappears for chunks of the movie when it’s clear we’re either up in Johnny’s grill or in Kathy’s, but the bouncing around between these three is never a problem — they’re all interesting for different reasons. Heavy is the head that wears the crown with Johnny, while Benny is mostly silent, busy posing like James Dean. Kathy is our window into this world as she tries to keep Benny safe from himself and from the growing violence in the gang.

And that’s where the tension comes from: the relative innocence of the bikers early days are darkened by the changing culture, Vietnam vets coming back damaged and self-medicating, the gang growing beyond Johnny’s control, the fragmenting of its own counter-culture dream. The film’s beautifully mounted — I doubt I’ll see anything as gorgeously lit this year as the two-shot we get between Hardy and Butler as Johnny tries to convince Benny to take over the gang. It’s practically erotic.

And, yes, the movie doesn’t quite find the drama in its conclusion that I was hoping for, but it shines as a showcase for three performers — Comer, Butler, and Hardy — working close to or at their peak powers. The Bikeriders approaches and engages with the central tenets of so much excellent American cinema, while Jeff Nichols proves again he’s one of the best filmmakers working.