The Bikeriders

 Johnny (Tom Hardy) - a truck driver and family man - forms his motorcycle club, The Vandals, after watching Rebel Without a Cause. It's funny, sure, but it's also key.

 But The Bikeriders is not Johnny's movie. Nor is it Benny's (Austin Butler), the club member who epitomizes the biker way of life - a biker's biker, so to speak... but little else. No, the movie centers on Kathy (Jodie Comer): a young woman who, to her surprise, falls in love with Benny and spends the rest of the film somewhere between affectionately putting up with the life and the extended family it comes with, and trying to peel her partner away from it.

 We also get to hang out with a colourful cast of characters: Zipco (The one and only Michael Shannon) as a burnt out bullshit idealist, easy-going Cal (Boyd Holbrook), a guy who defects from The Hell's Angels (Norman Reedus) because he likes the vibes in Johnny's crew better - they all make an impression. It's easy to see why they'd try to hang on to what they have together even when it's clearly not going to end well.

 As an eventful year passes, Kathy narrates to a photographer (Mike Faist) how everything went to shit once the group got too big for its own good and the new guard pushed to shift Johnny's social club into a gang. Things will be what they got to be, to paraphrase the film spelling out one of its main themes.

 It's a simple movie that isn't really interested in the rise and fall story its superficial similarities to Scorsese-influenced crime epics suggest - except in how they inform the characters who drive that action. When, say, a critical challenge for the club's leadership comes, it's almost comically underplayed; The fireworks are reserved for loaded conversations, the devastating fallout from an attempted sexual attack, or a falling out between friends that's subtle and understated and as final as a gunshot.

 The acting is beautifully calibrated, the script (by director Jeff Nichols) is sharp and often very funny, and all the surfaces are immaculately kept: The soundtrack features a wealth of not-only-the-biggest-hits from the era, the cinematography (by Adam Stone, who came up with Nichols on Shotguns Stories and has worked with him since) gives the film a grounded, documentary feel while remaining very cinematic, and the sound mix never lets you forget how powerful the beasts these people ride in are.

 For all its energy, it's an oddly passive film. The script was very loosely adapted from a seminal book of biker photographs and interviews by Danny Lyons, and his (as played by Mike Faist) talks with Kathy provide structure to the movie, hopping around chronologically to give the thin narrative a little more impact. The trickery works, but it also makes the film feel deceptively slight.

 Stay for the credits for the now-standard real-life pictures, and even better, a Lucero song that almost acts as a recap of the movie, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-style. The song is almost twenty years old (from 2005's Nobody's Darlings, a cast-iron classic) and based on the same interview that forms the backbone for the movie; Ben Nichols, the songwriter, is Jeff Nichol's brother and turned him onto the book.

 This is a deceptively great film, one that gets better as I unpack it. I hesitate to say it's deep - many of the things it does have been done before - but it's all done uncommonly well, with character moments and song selections carefully reinforcing its handful of themes. I keep coming back to Johnny, mesmerized by Rebel Without a Cause, his family and day job momentarily a distant concern. Enthralled by a vision of an open road, his adoring buddies at his side. Funny, sure. And more than a little tragic.