The Bikeriders: Why bikers make women and men alike swoon

Starring Austin Butler and Tom Hardy, the latest film about the leather-jacketed rebels is inspired by the story of a real-life biker gang – and is a reminder of their dangerous appeal.

The revving vibration of a chrome engine, the acidic smell of tarmac and motor oil, wind in the hair and two wheels on the road: few vehicles are as writ large on the subconscious of the cinema-going public as the motorcycle. Jeff Nichols' new film The Bikeriders is loosely based on the early years of real-life biker gang the Chicago Outlaws, who are fictionalised onscreen as the Vandals, and mythologises them and their journey from innocence to experience in the advancing years of the 1960s. Revealing an arch awareness of the films of bikers past, Nichols borrows from a rich lexicon of cultural fascination with the mirage of the leather-jacketed rebel.

The Bikeriders is based on a landmark book of photojournalism from Danny Lyon, who as a young man in the early 1960s ed the motorcycle club to learn about and photograph the rough-and-ready outsiders who populated it. The film draws on many of the actual bikers who Lyon hung out with, including Austin Butler as Benny, the gang's wildest and most charismatic member, with Jodie Comer as his girl Kathy and Tom Hardy as Johnny, the leader of the group. It's Kathy, though, who narrates the story, and from whose point of view it is told: depicted onscreen speaking to an audio recorder in laundromats and living rooms, in real-life she also spoke to Lyon (Mike Faist, in the film) about her experience living with the bikers.

Since the rise of the US motorcycle gang movie in the 1950s – the ground zero of the biker film was The Wild One (1953), featuring a leather-clad young Marlon Brando – the biker movie has come to symbolise counterculture, rebellion, danger, and the freedom of the open road on our screens, to the point where it's ed into stereotype. Growing popular concurrent with the actual rise of the motorcycle club in the US, the genre also waned after the real-life counterparts – which began as social hubs for hobbyist mechanics and racers – degenerated into organised crime.     

Nichols, a filmmaker with his roots in US independent film and an interest in the nation's cultural history, has long been in love with the subject matter. "I found Danny's book when I was in my early 20s, and my oldest brother was reading it," he tells the BBC. "I was immediately captivated by the photographs, and then I dug deeper, and the text in the book is just transcribed interviews of the bike riders and one of their wives, and you just get this complete picture of the subculture. It was like a breakdown of their psychology and their style." It took some time for him to build a story from the disparate transcripts, however. "I knew I had the shape of something that had formed in the late 50s all the way to becoming a proper gang in the early 70s. But that's not really a story. Then, I thought about the way the real Kathy spoke about Benny. It was hilarious and beautiful and self-deprecating and introspective. I thought: 'What if there was this other character who ran the club that was equally in love with this young man">window._taboola = window._taboola || []; _taboola.push({ mode: 'alternating-thumbnails-a', container: 'taboola-below-article', placement: 'Below Article', target_type: 'mix' });