The Bikeriders
Focus Features | Release Date: June 21, 2024 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
70
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 53 Critic Reviews
Positive:
40
Mixed:
11
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Wall Street JournalKyle SmithJun 20, 2024
There’s no goal to be met or secret to be uncovered. Instead, it’s a collection of odd, wonderfully realized vignettes that plunge us into an alternative way of life that it neither glamorizes nor satirizes but simply strives to understand. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawMar 13, 2024
This film opens up the storytelling throttle with a throaty growl, delivering the doomy romance of an old-fashioned western and the thrills of a mob drama. Read full review
90
We Got This CoveredCharlotte SimmonsJun 24, 2024
Jeff Nichols' masterminding could have sealed the deal on its own, but thanks to this cast, 'The Bikeriders' roars. Read full review
90
TheWrapTomris LafflySep 8, 2023
Some films merely offer you a clockwork plot. Others, like Jeff Nichols’ smokin’ cool The Bikeriders, whisk you away with a roar of mood and atmosphere. Read full review
90
VarietyPeter DebrugeSep 6, 2023
It goes a long way to humanize figures who’ve been long misrepresented on film, while giving audiences privileged access to this inner world. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleMatthew MonagleJun 20, 2024
While some filmmakers fade into obscurity during their time away from the screen, The Bikeriders is a welcome reminder that Nichols’ thoughtful explorations of economic tension and toxic masculinity are more relevant now than ever. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperJun 20, 2024
Writer-director Nichols does a skillful job of paying homage to the glamour and bad-boy appeal of motorcycles and motorcycle movies, but also illustrating that while these guys are the stuff of feature films, in real life you’d most likely grow tired of their company after yet another day of drinking and petty crime. Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeJun 24, 2024
While the actual plot is a little thin, this is a thrillingly evocative piece of film-making: it’s shot in colour rather than the black and white of Lyon’s photographs but there’s a weary, beer-stained grit to it all, like leathers that have wiped out across asphalt a few too many times. Read full review
80
ABC NewsPeter TraversJun 21, 2024
The cool factor is off the charts as director Jeff Nichols and a trio of sizzling stars—Austin Butler, Jodie Comer and Tom Hardy—turns a landmark 1968 photobook about a 1968 Chicago motorcycle club into a vibrant vibe of a movie that vrooms to life on the big screen. Read full review
80
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeJun 20, 2024
Most contemporary westerns end up mourning a vanished era of compromised freedom. The Bikeriders doesn’t quite believe in that myth, but it still finds time to dampen a handkerchief as its shadow recedes. A flawed, fascinating film. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesKatie WalshJun 20, 2024
The film is an evocation of character, place and time, the tempo alternating between moody and lively, like our central odd couple, laconic Benny and chatterbox Kathy. Read full review
80
Film ThreatBradley GibsonJun 20, 2024
To be authentic to the book, Nichols tells a story grounded in reality to paint an indelible, searing image of a moment fixed in time. Read full review
80
The New York TimesManohla DargisJun 20, 2024
Not much happens, but the people are beautiful and so too are their bikes, rumbling beasts that tribe members ride and ride on that familiar closed loop known as Nowheresville, U.S.A. Read full review
80
Film ThreatAlex SavelievOct 30, 2023
Nichols carefully avoids either demonizing or overly romanticizing his protagonists’ lifestyles. He portrays events just the way he imagines they would unfold. Read full review
80
NMEJames MottramOct 28, 2023
Eschewing melodrama for a more low-key register, it may not satisfy those looking for quick thrills. But this slow-burner is a stylish look at a bygone era, when all that mattered was having enough money to put petrol in your tank. Read full review
80
The TelegraphRobbie CollinOct 13, 2023
Nichols’ film delivers a grubbily glamorous blast of underworld machismo of the sort that Scorsese himself made a mid-career speciality: think wildly charismatic performances, elegant camerawork, regular jabs of barbarous violence, and a skin-fizzingly sharp jukebox soundtrack. Read full review
80
Total FilmNeil SmithOct 6, 2023
While the style seems familiar, the material feels fresh: a testament not only to how Nichols lovingly crafts a fictional story around the photos Danny Lyon took for his seminal 1968 book The Bikeriders, but also to the flesh his actors put on the bones of the archetypes who populate it. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterSheri LindenSep 6, 2023
What resonates beyond the brawls and blood is a profound affection for the people onscreen — those grace notes provided by a fine cast, with Jodie Comer and Tom Hardy stirring undercurrents that are particularly affecting precisely because they’re never explicitly examined or explained. Read full review
78
The Film VerdictAlonso DuraldeJun 20, 2024
Even if the only way to endow 1960s biker gangs with a sense of majesty and glory is to compare them to what would come later, Nichols captures those moments of fleeting greatness, allowing his lost men room to inhabit their own private inventions, to build their subculture and its mythologies, if only for a short time. Read full review
78
The Daily BeastNick SchagerJun 19, 2024
Unabashedly romanticizing its subjects as paragons of strength and style, it doesn’t have much substance lurking beneath its surface—but then, with a surface like this, it doesn’t really need any. Read full review
75
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenJun 25, 2024
What’s missing, in comparison to Nichols’ other movies, is an internalized angst. Read full review
75
Vanity FairRichard LawsonJun 21, 2024
As is, The Bikeriders plays as if a longer, more robust version disappeared somewhere in the editing room. But a spell is lightly cast nonetheless, enough to make it sting when things start to go sour for Johnny and Benny and the rest. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsJun 20, 2024
Nichols has yet to make an uninteresting film; this one’s a stimulating collision of myth and realism, and keeping Comer at the core was a very smart move. Read full review
75
Washington PostTy BurrJun 20, 2024
All that’s missing, really, is a story. “The Bikeriders” is almost good enough to convince us we don’t need one. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleJun 20, 2024
Even if you’d never in a million years want to ride with these guys, “The Bikeriders” makes you understand why they wanted to ride with each other. Read full review
75
Original-CinThom ErnstJun 20, 2024
The Bikeriders sparks enough interest to hint at the possibility of stronger stories being washed away in the flow of an unfocused narrative. There are good stories in The Bikeriders, fleshed out within an inch of their potential. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeMark FeeneyJun 20, 2024
Like Lyon balancing looking out and looking in “The Bikeriders,” Nichols balances the mythic and mundane in this version. Read full review
75
The Associated PressJake CoyleJun 20, 2024
The movie is unabashedly romantic about the Vandals but it’s equally dubious about the rugged masculinity they embody, too. “The Bikeriders” has its hands firmly on the throttle just it does the brakes. Read full review
75
ObserverEmily ZemlerJun 18, 2024
It’s gritty, nostalgic and occasionally romanticized, especially if you have an affinity for the era in which it’s set, which Nichols clearly does. Read full review
75
The PlaylistGregory EllwoodSep 6, 2023
It’s not acknowledged enough how difficult it is to make a period piece that doesn’t feel staged or performative. Nichols genuinely captures the spirit of this particular era and keeps your attention even if you never gave a second thought to those packs of bike riders passing you on the highway. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyMaureen Lee LenkerSep 6, 2023
Though the panoply of accents the actors choose could easily fill out a Midwestern grocery store checkout line, there's not a performance here that isn't admirable for its sheer chutzpah. Nichols has assembled an estimable ensemble, and they bring to life the antics and erratic violence of their characters with great authenticity. Read full review
73
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzJun 17, 2024
It is an anthropological drama that never cracks its subjects open – an approach that might work on paper, but feels beset by engine troubles on-screen. Read full review
70
Rolling StoneDavid FearJun 24, 2024
It’s a moving-picturebook, drifting from hazy barrooms to muddy-track brawls to working-class homes and haunts, and with an eye on the cumulative effect of so much vintage cool on display. Read full review
70
Little White LiesRogan GrahamJun 20, 2024
The Bikeriders is an enjoyable ride and one that Nichols fans will get a kick out of. The ensemble cast is enticing but the tried-and-true story arc isn’t injected with enough rigour to make this the classic it could be. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzJun 17, 2024
The whole isn't quite as interesting as the sum of its parts, is another way to put it. The parts, though, are quite good on their own. Read full review
70
IGNHannah StrongOct 12, 2023
An affectionate take on a much-romanticized subculture, The Bikeriders purrs along rather than zips, but its stellar cast ensures a smooth ride as Jeff Nichols offers some insights into the highs and lows of a legendary motorcycle gang. Read full review
67
IndieWireDavid EhrlichSep 6, 2023
The singular vibration that Nichols brings to the golden age of motorcycles gives way to the all-too-familiar entropy that ended it, as a movie that busts out of the gate as some kind of new American classic ultimately runs out of gas on the side of the highway. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliJun 24, 2024
It’s a passable production with some interesting performances but the bumpy screenplay and uneven pacing keep the audience at arm’s-length and limit the effectiveness of the narrative. Read full review
63
New York PostJohnny OleksinskiJun 24, 2024
Smooth as fresh asphalt, the film makes us pine for a pothole or two. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineDavid RobbOct 26, 2023
The sheer exuberance of the story and the stylistic brio of Jeff Nichols’s direction often compensate for the film’s lack of authenticity. Read full review
60
Screen RantAlex HarrisonJun 21, 2024
Gradually, everything becomes burdened with story. The more the triangle of Kathy, Benny, and Johnny is played up for drama, the less interesting it becomes. Read full review
60
Time OutKambole CampbellJun 20, 2024
Like some of the ’50s and ’60s biker flicks it homages, The Bikeriders runs out of gas in a predictable final reel that never quite delivers the promised heartache. Still, it’s an intelligent and strikingly photographed film, a journalistic but romantic snapshot of a moment in time lost forever. Read full review
60
EmpireBeth WebbJun 17, 2024
More of a slow burn than a thrill-ride, this study of bygone motorhead mentality at its most visceral and violent is gorgeously shot — but only nicks the surface. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubMatt SchimkowitzJun 20, 2024
It is too conventional to be an outlaw, but Nichols and the cast have a blast pretending. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreJun 24, 2024
The film wallows in a particular brand of Americana — denim and leather, cornfields and Harley-Davidsons, crumpled packs of cigarettes and boilermakers on the bar at a dive — without being comfortable laying claim to it. Read full review
50
RogerEbert.comRobert DanielsJun 20, 2024
It becomes empty, artificial scenes of actors playing dress-up. Read full review
50
The New YorkerRichard BrodyJun 20, 2024
The Bikeriders displays the cost of noninterventionist direction, of sticking to source material with a self-inhibiting fidelity. These characters are still in search of their auteur. Read full review
50
LooperAlistair RyderJun 20, 2024
It looks beautiful, and there are no weak links within the stacked ensemble, but it winds up feeling alarmingly empty. Read full review
42
ColliderEmma KielyOct 5, 2023
While Comer makes a committed effort to carry the film, it falls flat in its excessive filler, undeveloped characters, and symphony of bonkers accents. Read full review
42
The Film StageCaleb HammondSep 6, 2023
The Bikeriders is at its best when it’s a loose look at an inconsequential motorcycle club in ’60s Chicago. In our current era, where real subcultures are generally extinct from the Internet’s monopoly on shaping culture, a straightforward, fun, albeit idealistic look at what public community can offer men would’ve been enough of a statement for audiences to consider. Read full review
40
TimeStephanie ZacharekJun 21, 2024
Reverence can sap the life out of a film—that and too much acting. And boy, is there a lot of acting in The Bikeriders. Read full review
38
Paste MagazineAnna McKibbinOct 23, 2023
Unfortunately, Nichols’ interpretation feels like a blind wandering through uncharted land, populated by a host of chiseled yet undeveloped characters. The Bikeriders is a shallow parade of cool images. Read full review
25
Movie NationRoger MooreJun 20, 2024
This is a two hour waste of a lot of fine vintage motorcycles. Read full review
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