Within his approach to photojournalism, Danny Lyon observes his subjects with the patience of a saint, often taking as few photographs as possible and spending many hours waiting for the “mind's eye” to open, with the camera lens following suit. The effect in Lyon’s photobook, The Bikeriders, is at once near-intrusively personal and wildly distant, feverishly romantic yet flecked with the sweat and dirt of its participatory reportage. After all, Lyon would engage with his subjects, Chicago’s Outlaws Motorcycle Club, by way of full membership, flying the ‘colours’ and joining his comrades on the seat of a steel hog belching fire and fumes ー much against the advice of Hunter S. Thompson, who had felt the Hells Angels’ wrath in his Strange and Terrible Saga.

But is this approach entirely transferable to Jeff Nichols and his latest picture, also named The Bikeriders, who attempts to rekindle Lyon’s symphony of romanticism and reportage on screen, all whilst remaining devoted to “story, story, story” over style, as the director admits in behind-the-scenes footage?

No. Especially when the central plot is a Melba toast love triangle between Johnny (Tom Hardy), the clan’s woozy-tongued, truck driving numero uno; his young buck, unwilling protégé, Benny (Austin Butler); and Benny’s long-suffering wife, Kathy (Jodie Comer), whose simple desire to keep her husband safe lends Hardy an underlooked pathetic-ness. In this sense, Nichols fails to do as Romans do, jumping from a soap opera and back without truly honing in on the fidelity of those cultural moments and the filthy, grinning faces captured within them.

It’s a crying shame, for the Outlaws (renamed the Vandals) that exist on the story's periphery illuminate perspectives that are not just lived-in, but squatted-in, pissed on and chewed out.

Take, for instance, Michael Shannon’s Zipco, an old boy congealed in engine oil and hair, whose hatred for bourgeoise undergrad-types (or “pinkos”) illuminates a powerful, underlying sadness about his casting off to society's dusty fringes; or Cockroach (Emory Cohen), whose passion for Brylcreem is matched only by his enthusiasm for eating insects; or Funny Sonny (Norman Reedus), a Hells Angel whose Hun-like fur, California drawl and charcoal teeth leaves his Midwest colleagues mouths agape ー in 1965, the Angels are Eldritchian creatures to other motorcycle clubs: widely mythologised, but never seen in the flesh.

Quite contrary to Nichols’ point, that ‘love and war’ is the engine propelling his film forward, the romance of authenticity is The Bikeriders’ real bread and butter. Sure, we can see this in Erin Benach’s thoroughly immersive costume design, which evokes the candy-coloured gorgeousness of Kathryn Bigalow’s The Loveless ー particularly in the way each leather jacket gleams as if it were the factory chrome of the period-correct bikes they were designed for. It’s also in the Totenkopf patches, the Iron Crosses and the “1%” symbol sewn into rider’s jacket ー the one percent of bike riders the American Motorcycle Association refuses to claim; the ones that don’t fit and don’t care, as Thompson reports in Hells Angels. But most importantly, it’s in the air the characters breathe.

One can observe this where Kathy shows up at a club meeting, half-disgusted by the display of potbellied unkemptness, half-turned on by the smouldering beauty of the ruffian chatting her up ー her future husband, Benny. Kathy attempts to return to her life of domestic servitude, with her three children and dictatorial boyfriend waiting at home. But, right there, at the bus stop, something changes: Kathy’s face becomes like putty, completely moulded by the atmosphere of fiery engines, polished steel and the hard-bitten vagrants riding atop of them ー much like Karen in Goodfellas, she is besotted with the filthy, rarefied air that surrounds these mythical beings. The deal is sealed in a fiercely beautiful moment where Kathy, arms tucked around her man, sees a brigade of headlights joining her: these fallen angels carrying her off to places unknown. Her eyes slowly shut, and The Shangri-Las “Out in the Streets” plays softly in the background. Perfection.

These are sequences that capture the emotion immortalised in Lyon’s photographs with pinpoint accuracy. But Nichols also demonstrates flare in showcasing those less-than romantic moments that didn’t make Lyon’s reportage. Like the party scene, where hundreds of Vandals divulge on a shindig, pleading their allegiance to what is becoming less of a motorcycle club and more of a criminal fraternity, complete with all the brutal dogmas becoming of the mafia. Here, disturbed Vietnam vets, heroin addicts, and marauders of all kinds begin to shove the Vandals into a death spin, with loyal riders literally being beaten out of the club.

It’s scenes like these which provide valuable historic insight into the culture: a time where disenfranchised young men and women, triangles refusing to fit in the square way of the Establishment, who joined MCs in the 50s and early 60s for a shared love of their machines, were once again being ousted from their peripatetic weltanschauung by a violently dismissive regime.

Even the open road has its boundaries. And the same can be said for The Bikeriders, a motorcycle movie that flirts with the majesty of Lyon’s decade-defining photobook, but places precedence on the marriage of star quality and story over reportage and romanticism. How frustrating, for Nichols has achieved something good, and good is not great.