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Lawless

Lawless

By Max Lalanne • January 10th, 2013
Static Mass Rating: 4/5
LAWLESS (MOVIE)
Momentum Pictures Home Ent

Release date: January 14th, 2013
Running time: 115 minutes

Director: John Hillcoat
Writers: Nick Cave, Matt Bondurant

Cast: Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Guy Pearce

Lawless

If you need one reason to see Lawless, John Hillcoat‘s violent and grimy bootlegging film set in Depression – and Prohibition – era 1930s rural Virginia, make it Tom Hardy.

Coming off The Dark Knight Rises, you might consider his role here — as the hulking and seemingly “invincible” Forrest Bondurant, who conveys more with his imposing physicality that with words — a slight improvement on the masked terrorist Bane and nothing much more. That would be a mistake, certainly, as what makes Hardy a riveting, spectacular and natural screen presence in Lawless is the surprisingly delicate and finely perfected subtleties he brings to the character.

A single glance from his eyes conveys it all, as well as his unintelligible and clumsy mumbling – which he does a lot in the marked presence of runaway showgirl Maggie, played by Jessica Chastain in all her fragile yet enduringly strong pale beauty. This has probably been said before, but it deserves to be said again — Tom Hardy is a mighty fine actor and will be nominated for an Oscar one of these days.

Will Lawless be the film that carries him, and perhaps itself, to glory? Probably not, though it does succeed at being a generally well-made, uncompromising, and gripping gangster tale. Loosely based on Matt Bondurant‘s fictionalized biography of his infamous family, The Wettest County In The World, the film is about the Bondurant brothers; Forrest, older brother Howard (Jason Clarke), and the younger, under-appreciated and frustrated Jack (Shia LaBoeuf). They’re local legends because they’ve survived the war and the plague that killed their parents.

They also make very good moonshine which prompts a corrupt Commonwealth Attorney to send over Special Deputy Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce) from gangster-ridden Chicago to get a cut of the Bondurant brothers’ profits. Rakes is of the unpleasant sort, a snakelike sadistic and viciously brutal man who shaves his eyebrows, has an odd high-pitched laugh, and wears a fancy suit complete with white kid gloves. In short; the personification of total villainy.

Lawless

After Rakes sneers at the uncivilized backwater hicks, Forrest more than returns the open contempt at having to pay anyone — “We don’t bow down to nobody,” he reminds Jack — and, with the local intimidated police stuck somewhere in the middle, war begins, slowly building to an explosive boiling point and a decently satisfying finale.

Gary Oldman, great as always, is awfully underused as a Tommy gun-wielding mobster, while Mia Wasikoswka, along with Chastain, provides some of the film’s softer moments as a strict preacher’s daughter brimming with sweetness at the smitten Jack.

The brutally bloody and hard-hitting spates of violence that occur regularly in Lawless bring to mind some of the more controversial aspects of Bonnie And Clyde, albeit with a little more unpleasant gore brought on by good ol’ fashioned knives and knuckledusters. However, the overall visuals were underwhelming.

I have to bring to mind also The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, another film full of dirty, crude men based on real-life legends doing uncivilized things in a rural setting — but apart from being elegantly elegiac and poised, the stylized visuals were pleasing and accentuated the natural beauty of the raw landscape. Lawless, while having excellent production design and costumes to fit the drab period, isn’t a particularly pretty movie to watch, but it gets the job done, both aesthetically and story-wise.

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Max Lalanne

Max Lalanne

Max Lalanne is an award-winning student filmmaker - whose debut short won a prestigious award at the Houston Intl. Film Festival when he was just 13. The bi-lingual film blogger and critic also has his own movie website, SmellofPopcorn.com.

He loves almost all kinds of cinema and watches a diverse array of movies on a regular basis, some of his favourites include Dr. Strangelove, Fight Club, Lord of the Rings, Aliens, and Finding Nemo. You can follow Max on Twitter @maxlalanne.

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