Review: Lawless

Between Public Enemies, Lawless, and the forthcoming Gangster Squad, I think it’s safe to say that Hollywood is in the midst of resuscitating the half drowned, concrete shod corpse of the gangster film. Cool, Hollywood! 

On the surface, John Hillcoat’s Lawless seems like a retread of his 2005 film The Proposition, both penned by Nick Cave. Yet where The Proposition is an interesting-but-flawed meditation on violence, authority, and Australia, Lawless is pretty much a straight-up gangster flick. 

Lawless, despite being based upon a true story—The Wettest County in the World by the bootlegger’s ancestor Matt Bondurant—follows the archetypal gangster beats pretty well. Three brothers, Jack (Shia LaBeouf), Howard (Jason Clarke), and Forrest (Tom ‘The Bomb’ Hardy) are happily distilling away in the hills of Prohibition-era Virginia when a big city Commonwealth’s Attorney decides he wants a cut of their profits, or else he’ll bring the law down hard on the moonshining locals. Naturally, the boys decline, and a violent back-and-forth plays out amidst two romance plots, a coming-of-age story, various redneck hijinks, and lots of Bluegrass.

To be totally honest, the only good reason to see this movie is for the performances. LaBeouf, despite near universal internet-hate, is a perfectly fine actor, and he never gave me Even Stevens flashbacks. Guy Pearce plays a suitably intimidating villain as the eyebrowless, immaculate Special Deputy Rakes. Gary Oldman does his classic ‘be in a movie for only two scenes’ routine, so that’s fun.

The best part by far is Tom ‘Quickly Becoming My Favorite Actor’ Hardy. Hardy is a gosh darned pile of man, and he just exudes presence throughout this film. It feels like he’s bulging out of the letterbox whenever he’s in a shot. He should get an award for remaining that menacing while wearing that many cardigans. 

However, what we end up with is a handful of good performances in a film that doesn’t completely work. Considering it’s based (loosely, I imagine) on a true story, I suppose they can’t just rewrite history, but I found myself wishing they had. The Bondurant Brothers’ motivation is essentially, ‘we’re breaking the law and we’re going to keep breaking it, not because we need to, but because we were doing it already, gosh darn it.’ It’s not exactly the stuff epics are made from.

There are moments of great cinematic beauty (as well as violence), but Lawless just ends up not having anything to say about its powerful imagery. Instead, it opts for a conventional plot that concludes with a mushy, saccharine, ‘aw-shucks’ ending. 

A great genre film transcends its genre and rewrites the rules, even if it’s in a small way. A good genre film is like a well-made machine, there’s a simple satisfaction in all the pieces coming together. Lawless is barely a good genre film. All the pieces don’t quite come together, but hell, at least some of them are real shiny.