Jodie Comer, Austin Butler and Tom Hardy captivate in this gritty, inspired-by-real-life motorcycle tale

“The Bikeriders” is, at its heart, about love: romantic, platonic, familial or even for a group of misfits-turned-motorcycle club-turned-gang. It’s about how love can be kind and how it can be cruel, often both at the same time. And it’s about how love can change us — sometimes for the better, sometimes … not so much.

Written and directed by Jeff Nichols, “Bikeriders” is inspired by Danny Lyon’s 1967 photo-book of the same name, in which the photographer embedded himself with the real-life Chicago chapter of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club in the mid-1960s. Chronicling the heady, turbulent rise of the fictional Vandals motorcycle club, the film actually frames the story through the eyes of someone who doesn’t ride a motorcycle: Kathy (a fantastic Jodie Comer), who one days stumbles into a dimly lit motorcycle bar and never really leaves.

Her wildfire-intense romance with Austin Butler’s Benny anchors one point of a triangle of relationships that form the core of “The Bikeriders,” the other two being between Benny and Vandals leader Johnny (Tom Hardy) and between members of the Vandals club as a whole. All of this is captured by Danny (Mike Faist, portraying the fictional version of the real-life person), who follows, interviews and photographs the Vandals throughout the late ’60s. (Stick around for the credits, and you can see some of the real Lyon’s photographs.)

Butler, fresh off his acclaimed performances in “Elvis” and “Dune: Part Two,” is walking charisma in “Bikeriders.” It oozes from him in every scene he’s in, compelling you to watch even when all he’s doing is staring off into the distance, watching golden-hued crop fields pass by. But Benny himself is an oddly flat character. A major through-line of “Bikeriders” is change: The story takes place over years, with enormous shifts between all relationships. But, save for the movie’s final minutes, Benny is static, this unchanging enigma of a man who says he cares about nothing except riding but who’s defined by just about everything else in his life. (It’s ironic Kathy laments that she can’t change Benny; of the two of them, he’s the one who changes her.)

But to be fair, the story isn’t really about Benny, or even the Vandals. It’s about how Kathy sees Benny, how she watches the Vandals morph from this little ragtag group of people who didn’t fit in anywhere else — but desperately wanted to belong — into a notorious criminal gang where blood was more commonly seen than oil. (Hardy’s portrayal of a leader who slowly loses control, and his sense of morality, is fantastic, as is his ability to incrementally increase the sense of dread you feel each time Johnny comes back on screen.)

It’s easy to see the rose-tinted glasses being put on as Kathy talks about the past with Danny (the story is told in media res and in nonlinear fashion). It’s just shy of romanticizing, which feels about right coming from Kathy. She’s not quite an unreliable narrator, but her bias toward Benny is clear.

In the end, “The Bikeriders” is a complicated romance wrapped in a brutal origin story soaked in blood and oil. It captures how sometimes choice can be just an illusion but that sometimes you have to make a choice anyway. It’s a love story through and through, even if no one would ever call it a meet-cute. It’s not without its bumpy roads, but it’s a enjoyable ride nonetheless.

Four vandalized stars out of five.