As a biking fanatic who also happens to love film, it’s no surprise that I want to find some of the best movies for people who are into cycling. You wouldn’t think it, but there are a lot of critically acclaimed movies that feature bicycles in iconic scenes. Here’s just a quick breakdown of some of the best movies for biking fanatics – hope you enjoy it!
15. Tracers (2015)
Taylor Lautner stars as Cam, a New York bike messenger who crashes, meets a woman named Nikki, and ends up drawn into her parkour crew. The cycling quickly gives way to rooftop jumps and crime, so if you’re a cycling fan, the bike scenes are the main draw here.
Cam’s job places him right in the middle of city traffic, where the only way through can be a gap between cars. That section has a scrappy kind of appeal. After he joins the crew, his need for money pulls him into far more trouble than a tough shift on the bike.
14. Bicycle Dreams (2009)
A long ride might seem like a wonderful way to spend a day. Then you watch Bicycle Dreams and discover what happens when the ride crosses the United States, and the clock hardly allows any time for sleep.
Stephen Auerbach’s film tracks cyclists in the Race Across America, where the pressure keeps mounting as they attempt to cross the country in ten days. You get a close-up view of just how exhausted a person can be and still climb back on a bike. Even a short pause begins to feel like a major decision.
The death of a rider shifts the mood of the film. From that point on, the race becomes far harder to watch, as the others try to comprehend what has happened and choose how to continue.
13. Premium Rush (2012)
For much of Premium Rush, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is racing around Manhattan trying to deliver a single envelope. That sounds like a simple errand. The crooked police officer who is after that envelope makes certain it is not.
Gordon-Levitt takes on the role of Wilee, a bike messenger who rides a fixed-gear bicycle with no brakes. The movie takes full advantage of his constant need to keep moving, particularly when it shows him figuring out which route through traffic could end in a crash. An opening car door can pose as much danger as the man pursuing him.
Michael Shannon gives that man a short temper and a truly terrible day. His mounting fury makes the chase a lot of fun, and the other messengers give Wilee riders who can match his pace on two wheels. Among all the action films you might watch for their bicycle scenes, this one offers plenty to enjoy.
12. Ride the Divide (2010)
The route in Ride the Divide stretches from Banff, Canada, all the way to the Mexican border, covering more than 2,700 miles of riding along the way. A large portion of it goes through the Rocky Mountains. Even from the comfort of your couch, there’s a lot to absorb.
Hunter Weeks follows a small group of riders as they take on the Tour Divide race. The mountain scenery is a major part of the draw, but you also experience the slow grind of pushing on when you’re exhausted and far from home. Small towns dot the route, along with long stretches of open space and ample time for doubt to creep in. If you’ve ever had to talk yourself through the final few miles of a ride, you’ll have some sense of what these riders are facing.
11. Accomplice (2020)
Accomplice is a fine reason to watch skilled riders pull off moves that would have most of us putting a foot down and walking. Jeremy Grant’s mountain biking film carries its riders across wild terrain, where steep slopes and massive jumps give the riding a real sense of scale. The lines they pick are worth watching closely.
What seems like a terrible spot to place a wheel can turn into a route down the hill in the right hands. Teton Gravity Research lets the riding breathe, so you can take in the scenery as well as the stunts. This is an easy choice when you’re after a film packed with bikes in motion.
10. The Ride (2018)
Shane Graham portrays John, a troubled teen whose new home compels him to confront the racism he was raised with. His foster father, portrayed by Ludacris, is Black. Trust takes time to build, and a mutual interest in bikes gives them a place to begin.
The Ride, which is based on the life of BMX rider John Buultjens, features plenty of family drama surrounding its biking scenes. The riding is important because it’s clear why John would become so attached to it. Gaining a skill gives him a reason to listen, to keep trying, and to spend time with someone who cares about him.
The BMX element brings some enjoyment to a story with a difficult beginning, and Ludacris lends the family scenes a welcome feeling of calm. You’ll take more away from this film if you’re willing to spend time with John when he’s off the bike too.
9. Inspired to Ride (2015)
The first Trans Am Bike Race covers a total of 4,233 miles. No support vehicle will arrive to fix a rider’s rough day, and no cash prize awaits at the finish. That is exactly what makes the people who take it on so interesting.
Mike Dion’s film follows riders such as Mike Hall and Juliana Buhring as they make their way across the United States. The race attracts people from around the world, each with a personal reason for wanting to spend so many hours in the saddle. As the miles pass, you get time to develop a sense of who they are.
For anyone drawn to the idea of a long bike journey, the scenery alone is a reward. Sleep deprivation brings you back down to earth quite quickly. Much of the film’s appeal comes from watching the riders juggle food, rest, and the urge to keep pushing, particularly once you begin to care about who reaches the finish.
8. Hard Miles (2023)
Before anyone can take pride in a massive bike ride, someone must first get the group out onto the road. In Hard Miles, that is no easy task. Matthew Modine stars as Greg Townsend, a coach who leads a group of boys from a juvenile correctional school on a ride from Denver to the Grand Canyon.
The film is based on Townsend’s work with the RidgeView Academy cycling team. The boys have much to learn about riding as a group, and they are hardly excited by every lesson. Their complaints make the story feel more like a real bike trip. A sore backside is still a sore backside, even when the plan is supposed to change your life. As the miles pile up, the group must learn how to help one another through a tough stretch of road.
7. The Armstrong Lie (2013)
Alex Gibney started out making a film about Lance Armstrong’s comeback to competitive racing. But once Armstrong’s doping was exposed, the project turned into an entirely different story.
That shift gives The Armstrong Lie a distinctive perspective. Gibney was able to film Armstrong throughout his comeback, so viewers see the public image being crafted while already aware of how much of it would later collapse. Gibney’s own part in telling that story also becomes a thread within the film.
For cycling fans, the race footage arrives loaded with uncomfortable background. The film examines the people Armstrong harmed and the pressure he was able to exert on anyone who questioned him. You don’t have to follow every stage of the Tour de France to keep up with it. The most incisive moments are frequently the interviews, where a composed reply can reveal a great deal about how Armstrong maintained control of his narrative for so long.
6. The Climb (2019)
Most riding partners know better than to deliver a huge piece of bad news halfway up a hill. Mike lacks that kind of sense. As he and his friend Kyle pedal along a steep road, he confesses that he’s slept with Kyle’s fiancée. Kyle now has to process that news while trying to catch his breath. The long opening scene lets the bad timing grow funnier and more painful with each turn of the pedals, and anyone who’s struggled to hold a conversation on a climb will recognize the feeling.
The rest of the film follows their messy friendship over the years, so cycling fans should come for that opening stretch and stay if they enjoy the pair’s awkward humor. Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin make a simple ride feel like the worst possible place to be stuck with a friend.
5. Tour de Pharmacy (2017)
This short HBO comedy gives professional cycling a rather brutal roasting. Andy Samberg and John Cena are among the cyclists in a fictional Tour de France where doping has reduced the race to a farce.
The film mimics the style of a serious sports documentary, then packs it with ridiculous race footage and interviews that grow more absurd as they proceed. A little knowledge of cycling’s scandals helps with some of the jokes, though the cheating is hardly subtle enough to require much explanation. It’s crude, silly, and runs only about 40 minutes. Lance Armstrong even appears as a source whose efforts to conceal his identity are part of the joke.
4. Icarus (2017)
Bryan Fogel opens Icarus with a question that stems from his own cycling experience: how much could doping alter his performance, and could he get away with it? His plan leads him to meet Grigory Rodchenkov, who runs Russia’s anti-doping laboratory. Then the film takes an unexpected turn that Fogel could scarcely have planned.
Rodchenkov’s part in Russia’s doping scheme becomes the central story, with the stakes rising well beyond one amateur cyclist’s race results. The early cycling scenes offer an entry point into the film, but it is the mounting danger surrounding Rodchenkov that makes it hard to look away. Fogel must continue filming as the story shifts around him.
For anyone who follows competitive sport, it is a bleak look at how little a test result can reveal when those in charge of the tests are themselves involved in the cheating.
3. Napoleon Dynamite (2004)
Like it or hate it, Napoleon Dynamite featured a classic bike scene. After Napoleon meets Pedro, a transfer student who has a distinctly Hispanic accent, he believes that he’s finally found a friend. They walk outside to where Pedro’s bike is, and Napoleon is immediately floored by how “cool” the bike is. It’s called the Sledge Hammer, which was a very famous bike in the 1980s.
After a good couple of minutes of admiration, Napoleon asks Pedro if he can do any “sweet jumps”. They go out to the sidewalk, and Napoleon sets up a small jump with some cinderblocks and a piece of wood. Pedro pops on the bike, pedals hard, and cruises right over the jump, which is only about a foot high. Napoleon proclaims that he got “over 3 feet of air that time,” when Pedro didn’t get more than a foot. Then Napoleon tries and immediately breaks the jump and injures himself.
2. The Goonies (1985)
As a kid, The Goonies was by far my favorite film of all time. I probably watched it more than 20 times by the age of 10, which tells you a lot about how I felt about being a kid and having fantastical adventures in my life. The most exciting scene in the movie might not be the biking scene, but the biking scene is certainly memorable.
When all of these kids discover a map that points to a hidden treasure, they want to go explore – but their brother won’t let them. So, they end up tricking him and tying him to a couch, as well as flattening the tires of his bike. They all hop on their cruisers and head out to the start of the map, passing a lot of beautiful scenery on their way.
The goal is to get to the coast, so as they move through the small town, eventually, they get to the forest. After the forest and the beautiful, lush foliage that it contains, they finally reach the coast and the starting point of the map. It’s one of the most free-spirited scenes of childlike wonder that you will ever see in a movie, so if you haven’t seen it, you should check it out.
1. E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
This is probably the most obvious and famous scene in a movie; it plays a huge part. It is perhaps the most copied, loved, and adored scene in all of the movies, so much so that the production company that filmed the movie was able to get a trademark on this particular image (title image).
In the movie, Eliot befriends E.T., a lovable alien who’s far from home. The final scene showcases them both biking across the sky, with the full moon in the background. They’re on a cruiser bike similar to the ones you can get for cruising down the beach, and I must admit that watching this movie as a child was one of the things that got me into bicycling in the first place.
Say what you want about the movie, but this bike scene is one of the ones that people remember the most, even decades after its release.