It can be nice to hide your skeleton key, stowed away and available to only the most eager of searchers, but there’s also nothing wrong with leaving it right out on the table. Though the movie opens with a meet cute between future lovers, The Bikeriders’ true genesis point arrives about ten minutes into its runtime, when Johnny (Tom Hardy) sits down at home and takes in a televised showing of The Wild One. Instantaneously connecting with Marlon Brando’s renegade motorcyclist on a spiritual level, the rough-and-tumble family man immediately starts mimicking the actor’s singular accent, pitch, and cadence, absorbed to the point where impression bleeds into actualization. It’s a deft bit of characterization, but an even more convincing explanation of both the movie that follows, and American culture as a whole. Joining the ones you can’t beat is fine and all, but it’s got nothing on The Bikeriders’ unspoken mantra; if you can’t shake ‘em, become ‘em.

Treating decades of iconography as an endless hall of mirrors was always baked into this one on a molecular level. Adapted from an award winning photography book by Danny Lyon, Jeff Nichols’ first feature film in nearly a decade takes the liberty of imagining the daily lives and inner workings of a 1960’s biker gang whose living legacy has since been converted into imagery, leaving his movie to follow suit. In the director’s largely speculative retelling, Johnny harnesses his new found wanderlust to create the Chicago Vandals, a group of leather-clad ne’er-do-wells whose criminal exploits are largely limited to an omnipresent noise violation and standing speeding ticket. The band of misfits is headlined by Benny (Austin Butler), a soft-spoken emblem of simmering masculine cool who quickly couples with Kathy (Jodie Comer), a midwesterner in search of a group to call her own who serves as the flick’s narrator.

Though the film covers several years worth of events and cultural shifts, the plot isn’t so convoluted as to require voice-over. Comer’s double duty here exists to align the movie with a specific strand of cinematic history, or better yet, a single totemic picture: Goodfellas. It’s impossible not to think of Lorraine Bracco’s Karen Hill during nearly all of Kathy’s scenes, a comparison that The Bikeriders knowingly courts again in both its structure and its steady stream of doo wop needle drops. Assembling your movie in direct likeness with an all-time classic is certainly a risky move, but where previous Scorsese imitations have either been haphazard in their thievery or too pious in their fealty, Nichol’s utilizes our familiarity with the gangster epic to deepen his thesis, examining the way in which we all become inseparable from the things we witness and consider at an impressionable age. He’s looking to the past to clarify the present, and his trio of stars are right there with him.

Where Hardy takes inspiration from Brando in his every movement, Butler does the same with James Dean, channeling his stoic machismo while hardly lifting a finger. The less-is-more approach extends to his dialogue, which is sparse and underplayed, leaving the actor with little more to do than be lavishly praised by cinematographer Adam Stone’s camera. Turning Benny into a near-silent gravitational force proves wise when contrasted against the scenery chewing that surrounds him, and each individual’s patience for these turns will likely dictate how they feel about the movie writ large. Comer, all wide eyes and aw shucks affectation, is really going for it, as is Hardy, high pitched and contorted with years of bodily deterioration. They both manage to bring a sort of golden hour grace to their roles, but at a certain point the flick does feel like watching the final round of the Movie Accent Olympics. Your mileage may vary, but only a spoil sport would say there’s no fun to be had.

Occasional over-acting is the only parodic bit of meta-text that The Bikeriders affords itself, as the yesteryear recreations are otherwise handled with a tinge of religiosity, from Chad Keith’s wholly believable production design to Erin Benach’s tactile and lived-in wardrobe curation. It’s all treated with earnest romanticism, and when the bikes start roaring through theater speakers, there’s no doubting the affection in every sound and image. Placing a nostalgic veneer over the proceedings elides much of the Chicago Vandals’ more sinister aspects, and while the closing passages lament the incursion of drugs, violence, and sexual misconduct into a space that was once pure, they were surely always there in some form or fashion. One gets the feeling that the whole production is letting these guys off a little too easily, but the fondness of a distant heart is the point of the whole enterprise.

Nichols is at home paying tribute filmic to modes and genres of the past, and after making a name for himself by riffing on the paranoid 70’s (Take Shelter) and the Amablin 80’s (Mud, Midnight Special), it would be fair to call it his primary undertaking. The Bikeriders is something different; rather than refashioning the past, it interrogates its hold on us, and wonders if we’ve ever been anything other than what’s come before us. This is true not only for our heroes, but for the jaded Vietnam vets and dead-eyed youths who eventually take over, imposing their own ideas of freedom and revelry, undoubtedly molded after the updated iconography of their own generation.

For all the expository dialogue and insistent narration, this point is never given voice, preferring to hang over the movie like flecks of dust in sunlight. Only the audience will be able to determine if a celluloid essay on how we’re all prisoners of a moment that was never ours is worthy of a feature film, but Nichols and company are deft and persuasive in its construction. The past may be intractable, but that doesn’t stop anyone from enthusiastically cosplaying it as the present, and with enough commitment to the bit, this game of dress-up can last in perpetuity. Everyone knows progress isn’t linear; The Bikeriders posits that it’s a closed loop, destined to be willed back to the very place from which it started.