Some two decades ago, the writer-director Jeff Nichols (“Take Shelter,” “Mud,” picked up a copy of Danny Lyon’s 1967 book titled “The Bikeriders,” which focused on the Outlaws Motorcycle Club that was For years, Nichols tooled around with the idea of the book serving as inspiration for a fictional feature film — and it finally comes to fruition with the gorgeously shot and star-studded “The Bikeriders,” which plays like “Goodfellas” on two wheels, with heavy influence from “Easy Rider” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” as well. Filmed in a kind of grainy style reminiscent of indie films from the late 1960s and early 1970s, “The Bikeriders” is set in and around the Chicago of the 1960s but was filmed primarily in the greater Cincinnati region, and quite frankly looks like it was filmed primarily in the greater Cincinnati region. (Adding to the stylized weirdness, which somehow works because everything about this movie has a kind of hazy, dreamlike quality: The decidedly non-Chicago accents affected by the greatly talented actors who play the three main characters.
More on that in a moment.) The framing device has a fictionalized version of Danny Lyon, played by Mike Faist (“West Side Story,” taking still photos and recording an oral history of sorts of the Vandals MC from the inside. (The real-life Lyons actually did this from 1963-67, predating Hunter S.
Thompson and “Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga.”) Tom Hardy .
