4K Blu-Ray: The Bikeriders

The Film

Writer-director Jeff Nichols is a great American poet.

He is at his best when documenting the lives of those who live beyond the blue highways. His heroes are societal outcasts. Some by their own choosing, others forced into exile by a callous system inhospitable to any who dance by their own tune. They are hurt, sometimes broken, yet always determined. There is a song in their heart, even if their mouth cannot begin to enunciate it.

In The Bikeriders, Nichols turns his eye to the dying years of a counter culture attempting to understand itself. The motorcycle club itself is fictional, and the players amalgamations. Yet they feel like people each one of us has met at some point or another. Rough, yet easy-going characters who are quick to laugh and even quicker to take offense. The kind of folks you enjoy sharing a beer or two, just as long as they don’t follow you home.

This is a film about connection, family, love, and the inability to say we need all of these things. Every man in the film has a deep yearning to be accepted, yet they’re so devastated by their own fathers that such a desire cannot ever be spoken. “A real man doesn’t cry about things,” Jodie Comer’s Kathy says early on, proudly. “When he does, you know it’s something serious.”

Instead, they fill their days talking about motorcycles, fighting, and drinking. Their bonds are unspoken, yet strong as any love between brothers. The great tragedy is seeing how much happier they all would be, if they could just say what pains their hearts.

Austin Butler is a dead ringer for James Dean as Benny, a young man so incapable of asking for help, he’d rather punish himself through violence to feel a connection to the world. His closest friend and father-figure is Johnny (a fantastic Tom Hardy), who started the motorcycle club — not out of a desire to make a point, but because of his inability to connect with his family. They love each other, and Johnny wants Benny to follow in the family business by taking over the club. Yet because they can’t say it, they’re doomed to repel each other until it’s too late.

The film is told in retrospect through interviews with Kathy. By the time we meet her, she’s already out of the club, and the glory days are a distant memory. Nichols’ was inspired to make the film after reading Danny Lyon’s seminal work of photojournalism about the Chicago Outlaw Motorcycle Club. Lyon appears in the film portrayed by Mike Faist, who disappears into the background, always listening and never intruding. He’s wonderful as a reporter who can look inside another society and keep his distance.

A deep melancholy permeates every frame. There is a longing for a simpler time that understands why it couldn’t continue. Which naturally doesn’t make the pain any easier. Nichols’ regular Michael Shannon has a small, but pivotal role as a drifter called Zipco, who delivers a pained monologue about his hatred for pinkos and queers. The people who went to college and did something with their lives. “My brother went to college for a year, until I told him I’d beat him senseless if he went back,” he declares, and we see on his face a haunted look that says more than words ever could. His brother joined the military instead and went to Vietnam. Zipco was considered an undesirable and couldn’t follow.

The Bikeriders is full of these stories. Small vignettes that pass us by on the road. They’re not the focus, yet they’re the entire picture. We catch them in glimpses and hear only snippets of resolutions down the line. It is a remarkable, lifelike mosaic, that feels lived-in. It is the film that comes closest to demystifying American rituals and contracts since Goodfellas. Like Martin Scorsese’s mobster epic, The Bikeriders is intoxicating only at the outset. There is an allure to living outside of society, until you realize what that actually means.

Nichols, like Scorsese, understands the contradiction of human nature and how men spin against the way they drive. His camera is compassionate, yet unforgiving. When death comes, it is ugly and small. There is nothing grandiose about crashing and burning, whether that’s metaphorical or not.

In The Bikeriders, Nichols has re-created the waning light of a counter culture movement, and it is a poetic, haunting masterpiece.

Technical Specs & Presentation

The Nordic release is, as always, a single disc package that lacks the audio options and second copy that other regions get. It's the bare minimum. A solid release, make no mistake, but gosh it's a pain that we only get the pared down editions here.

Video

For a digitally shot film, The Bikeriders looks incredibly textured. The 4K release captures every bit of detail seen on the big screen and recreates it gorgeously at home. This is a film with plenty of grimy romanticism, and it's wild how you can pick out details in the junk-ridden rooms and unwashed faces that pepper the story.

My favorite parts are the smoky bars where men go to escape their inadequacies. Check out, for example, the opening sequence as it first happens and its later revisit. Look how the cigarette in Butler's hand is rich and velvety against the light, and then how the fire reflects off Hardy's face when he and the boys get revenge on those that wronged them.

For a film that I already love dearly, there is no other way I'd want to watch it now and in the future.

Audio

The Dolby Atmos track is rich and textured, which is everything you'd want out of a film like this.

I was initially worried, as the theatrical presentation was one of my favorites in 2024, and I feared the physical media release couldn't match the perfect soundscape present in cinemas. Luckily, I was very wrong. This is a packed and demo-worthy disc that roars into life the moment the film begins.

The bikes sound like they're right in the room with you, gravel churns as if under your feet, and even the whispered admissions of regret come through nice and clear without getting lost in the mix.

I also have to applaud the mix for being loud in all the right ways. I didn't have to even once move to adjust the dial at any point. I could hear the dialog when I needed to, and let myself go under the roar of engines in the next minute without shattering my ear drums.

Extras

Apart from the commentary by Nichols, which is excellent throughout, the 4K Blu-Ray is quite sparse on the extras.

The three featurettes are all under 5 minutes in length, and most amount to little beyond press material about how much everyone liked working together. You can watch the whole thing in under 10 minutes and come away with as much knowledge about the film as you had going in.

Luckily, Nichols' commentary is fascinating as he delves into the origins of the source material, his choices on casting, writing, and staging. There's a wealth of little tidbits that film fans will pore happily over on multiple listens. Nichols is an engaging speaker, even if the track occasionally turns into um's and ah's as he tries to choose a topic to pursue.

Overall, a solid package thanks to the commentary, but barely.

Overall

Granted, I wish there were better extras, but a solid commentary track caps off a demo-worthy technical presentation, and that's nothing to complain about.

This modern masterpiece deserves the widest audience possible, and I'm so glad those who missed it in theaters get to experience it in such high quality as it is here.