No one has ever been more beautiful than Austin Butler in The Bikeriders
This essay about The Cyclists was originally written for the film’s European premiere at the 2023 BFI London Film Festival. It has been updated for the film’s theatrical release.
Elvis Presley’s sadly unfulfilled ambition for his film career was to become the next James Dean. So it’s an ironic coincidence that Austin Butler, after playing Elvis in the 2022 Best Picture Oscar nominee Elvis, should now aim straight for the kind of simmering but poised, unspeakably cool and devastatingly handsome role that defined James Dean in the 1950s – and score a bullseye. He brought with him a particularly creepy animal magnetism Dune: part twobut it’s absolutely ridiculous how good he looks The Cyclists.
The film is a motorcycle gang drama set in the 1960s, starring Butler as Benny, a laconic but hot-headed member of a Chicago motorcycle club, the Vandals. As Benny, Butler has artfully tousled, greased blonde hair and a scruffy goatee. He wears many layers of frayed, often sleeveless denim and leather, and rings on most of his fingers. He smokes. He plays pool. He leans on things a lot. He is a man of few words who usually saunters around the scene, or stares at the middle distance with moody intensity. But sometimes he erupts into violent action.
And of course he rides a huge, snarling chopper. (Make sure you The Bike Riders (in the loudest theater you can find, if you want to feel every bark and roar of the bikes, and every Shangri-Las needle dropped into your ribcage.) He has a signature move where he walks in an absurdly cool, nonchalant riding his bike with one hand, like this:
Image: 20th century studios
Here’s another example of one-handed cycling. This shot is actually a direct quote from a 1968 photojournalism book called The Cyclists, on which the film is based. Director Jeff Nichols (Mud, Midnight special) first saw the book twenty years ago and had been thinking about adapting it for a long time, because of its themes of masculinity and identity, but also because it looked so cool. So is his film. That includes Austin Butler.
Photo: Kyle Kaplan/20th Century Studios
The Cyclists is a well-known Good guys-esque story about working-class men, outsiders in mid-century America, seeking brotherhood and a sense of belonging, and ultimately being consumed by corruption and violence. But Butler is not our garrulous, fast-talking guide to this world, like Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill. He is the silence at the center of the film. The chatty voiceover that drives the story along actually comes from his wife Kathy, played (in an absolutely outrageous Chicago accent) by Jodie Comer.
Image: 20th century studios
The heavy lift, capital A, performs next to Comer The Cyclists is done by Tom Hardy as gang boss Johnny. Hardy does that mocking, menacing yet soulful thing with a gravelly voice that he does so well. Johnny loves Benny in a way that is both touching and a little scary. In their scenes together, Butler stands there almost still, absorbing Hardy’s intensity. It should be too passive and one-sided, but instead it is magnetic, because of Butler’s presence, his suppressed energy, his burning eyes and his Oh my God, look at that hair.
Image: 20th century studios
Butler has the least to do with the film’s triumvirate of leads, and his character is the simplest, to the point where he’s more of an icon than a real person. But it does not matter. If Elvis left you in doubt, The Cyclists seals it: This guy is a movie star, and this is a movie star performance. He always looks great, and his sheer magnetism pulls the rest of the film into his orbit.
The Cyclists is a film about old-fashioned, simple pleasures: great tunes, perfect costumes, mythical shots and a cast of great character actors who really go for it. (Including, but not limited to, Michael Shannon, West Side Storyby Mike Faist, Justified(‘s Damon Herriman, and a completely unrecognizable Norman Reedus as a rugged California wildman biker.) It’s a movie about watching the beautiful, unknowable people on screen – and that one beautiful, unknowable person in particular – just as Hardy’s character does at one point with Marlon Brando in it The wildand thinking: What would it be like to are them?
The Cyclists is in theaters now.