ONE FOR THE ROAD

The 60s biker drama that oozes cool…

Austin Butler (Elvis) stars as bad-boy biker Benny

Originally due to be released in December 2023, Jeff Nichols’ love letter to 60s biker culture was pushed into 2024 during the SAG-AFTRA strike, in the hopes the cast would be able to promote it during awards season. But now its release date is TBC as Disney is no longer distributing and Universal have taken hold of the handlebars. Based on Danny Lyon’s photoessay book, the film tracks a Chicago bike gang via the observations of one of the wives, Kathy (Jodie Comer). Falling for bad boy Benny (Austin Butler), Kathy watches as the group violently implodes under leader Johnny (Tom Hardy) – and finds herself fighting for Benny’s attention in a greaser love triangle. ‘It really is a love affair – even if it is somewhat one-sided,’ Nichols says of the Johnny/Benny relationship, one that sees Kathy storming up to her rival to tell him, ‘You can’t have him.’ ‘I think that Benny loves Johnny, and would do a lot for him, although Johnny asks the one thing that he can’t do…’

One of Nichols’ most commercial and handsome pics, the Goodfellas-esque Bikeriders is a performance masterclass according to the writer-director. Hardy’s work is a ‘force of nature’, Comer is his ‘ace up my sleeve’, and with Butler ‘there’s so much there’ – and his long-time producer, Sarah Green, is equally gunning for gold. ‘Those performances are so awards-worthy. Any one of them could be up for an award, they’re so strong.’

LONG SWORD

Twenty-four years in the making, Gladiator 2 is finally here.

There have been rumblings of a Gladiator sequel ever since Ridley Scott’s 2000 original took a tiger-sized bite out of the box office and conquered the Academy Awards. But how do you bring back Maximus? Is it set in the afterlife? So it was that Gladiator 2 only really got any traction three years ago, as Scott accepted the ‘very obvious idea’ of making it about the son of Maximus (Russell Crowe), from his union with Lucilla (Connie Nielsen, returning here). The script took shape as the legendary director was, like the rest of us, bingeing Normal People, and there was his lead – though presumably Paul Mescal shags less and fights more in this sword-and-sandal action epic.

Badass duties, meanwhile, go to Denzel Washington, who was previously so impressive for Scott in one of the director’s most underrated dramas, American Gangster. The acting icon will play a former slave who fought his way to freedom and now runs slave schools himself. He harbours, says Scott, ‘a major grudge against the Romans’.

‘I respect [Denzel] tremendously,’ Scott told TF. ‘I shouldn’t call Denzel a golden oldie – he’d fucking kill me – but he’s gold dust.’