Did Tom Hardy read Stone Male?

 

The reason that Disaster Amnesiac is asking this question is rooted in the fact that I watched The Bikeriders a few days ago. This 2023 film had flown beneath my radar, mostly. A chance encounter with it on a friend's cable gave an opportunity to see it, and there were a few free hours left that afternoon, so viewed it was. As a film it's pretty good. The setting alone, specifically Chicago, sets it apart from most Biker movies; the fact that the action did not take place in California or Arizona was definitely a refreshing spin for a film of that genre. The entire cast did quite a fine job of nailing the accents of the region (Chi, Milwaukee, Indiana), and even the California dudes in the story had believable cadences. As an amateur student of these sorts of American traits, Disaster Amnesiac found The Bikeriders to be pretty legit. Additionally, the sub-text was very compelling: the inevitable decline of an established social order and its take down from younger people vying for control of said order. It's a tragedy, and as such it's obviously worthy of exposition within film. I recommend it for these traits alone. All that said, it's the performance from Tom Hardy that is really intriguing to me. Hardy's performance as Johnny, the founder of Vandals MC, is one of a rarefied quality within this era's male roles. Perhaps a lot of men have tried to nail the qualities of older actors such as Bronson or Marvin or Eastwood, but I can't really recall any of them evincing them that well, at least until his in The Bikeriders. The guy just dominates every scene in which he appears, and does so with a minimum of overt gesture or line. Strong and silent to the max. Disaster Amnesiac is old enough to have known veterans of the Great Depression and WWII, and it's from that era which Johnny came up. As I viewed the film, I wondered many times, "...did this guy read Stone Male...?" If not, he must have studied many of the actors that Joe Carducci wrote about in that essential guide to film. Hardy did a masterful job of bringing the mostly lost and/or forgotten vibes described by Carducci, and it's goddamn brilliant to view. Enough so to make the somewhat pollyanna conclusion of the film palatable. His performance will hopefully be noted by directors and other actors. Johnny is a Stone Male, and this country needs a lot more of that quality to be out in front as we navigate the largely bullshit inheritance of Late Empire.