The American director Jeff Nichols went rather quiet after producing two "impressive" films in 2016, "Loving" and "Midnight Special". Now, he has come "roaring back onto the scene with 'The Bikeriders'", said Robbie Collin in The Telegraph.
Inspired by the photographer Danny Lyon's 1968 book about a notorious biker gang in Chicago, it delivers a "grubbily glamorous blast of underworld machismo" reminiscent of mid-career Scorsese: think wildly charismatic performances, "jabs of barbarous violence, and a skin-fizzingly sharp jukebox soundtrack".
Tom Hardy stars as Johnny, the leader of the fictional Vandals gang. The voice-over, though, comes from Kathy (a superb Jodie Comer), who is in love with Benny, Johnny's closest confidant, played by Austin Butler. "The plot, insofar as there is one, traces Hardy's rise and fall", as his club slips ever deeper into violent crime; but the film "is less interested in telling a story than pinning down a particular time, place and attitude – and does so with such pungent precision, you can all but smell it".
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Butler's "vain performance, all scowl and hooded eyes, threatens to tip the film into pastiche", said Matthew Bond in The Mail on Sunday. And the story's episodic structure does rather drain it of "immediacy and narrative drive". But Comer disappears brilliantly into her character, "while Hardy quietly delivers one of the best performances of his career as the ageing tough guy who knows his time will soon pass".
This "well-crafted" film has much to recommend it, said Deborah Ross in The Spectator. But be warned: it's exceedingly violent. "If you are squeamish, I reckon you'll spend a good 30% of the two-hour running time looking down into your lap."
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