Hell hath no fury as Shia LaBeouf scorned. I think that’s from a Greek play but don’t quote me. As for a pissed off Tom Hardy? Well Hell definitely ain’t got nothing on him either.
These are but a few lessons you will learn in director John Hillcoat’s (“The Road”) new revenge drama “Lawless,” a true story about the moonshining business set in Depression-era Virginia. Other lessons include: The illegal whisky business was a boomin’ in the backwoods, Gary Oldman is great at doing accents and Guy Pearce should not part his hair down the middle. More on Pearce later.
It is 1931 and nearly everyone in Franklin, Virginia was making their own moonshine. This was towards the tail end of Prohibition and, while illegal; the practice was hardly frowned upon by the local law. The sheriff was even good for buying a crate or two of the white lightening. We meet the Bondurant brothers, a trio of bootleggers who are notorious among the locals for being invincible. By the end of the film the boys will give this legend plenty of opportunity to prove correct.
If anyone of them is truly bullet proof it’s the soft spoken Forrest (Hardy), the leader of the gang who walks around hunched over like an old man grunting at the world. Brother Howard (Jason Clarke) is a big ol’ boy that seems to have gotten in the business so that he may swill from the Mason jars freely. Then there is little brother Jack (LaBeouf), the most sensitive of the brothers who must prove that he can harden up to be allowed in the family business.
When a new roughie from Chicago, the slimy Charlie Rakes (Pearce) tries to move in on the Bondurant boy’s, Forrest will not budge. This, of course, presents our conflict and bullets will go flying. Lots of machismo and there will be blood.
Working from a script by Nick Cave (Yes, as in “Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds”), Hillcoat gives us the story pretty straight and forward. There are a couple of romance subplots involving Forrest and a city girl running from her past (Jessica Chastain) and Lil’ Jack and a preacher’s daughter (Mia Wasikowska) that bog things down a bit. Both stories allow for a break in the violence but too much time is spent on them. The film is sprinkled with some animal symbolism: Will Jack shoot the pig? There’s the preacher’s daughter holding a baby deer. Two cocks are seen fighting after a Jack and Howard get in a friendly scuffle. This shows the animal nature of it all, the pure qualities of revenge, love etc. Nice stuff. I will seek out the book it is based on. It is called “The Wettest County in the World” by Matt Bondurant who is obviously a descendant of the brothers. The film was going to share the same name but early test screeners deemed the title too sexual sounding. True story.
“Lawless” is a vehicle for LaBeouf to prove that he is now a man capable of leading a serious film. His character’s coming-of-age arch is LaBeouf’s. Here in his small Indie project (The Anti-Transformers) LaBeouf is convincing and does grow before our eyes. While his performance is striking, the film belongs to Tom Hardy. He is magnetic and you cannot take your eyes off him. His Forrest is almost unintelligible (funny choice after “The Dark Knight Rises” gave us 3 hours of guessing what Bane said too) but genuine. The heavy drawl also makes you pay attention too every word intensely. Guy Pearce is able to match Hardy’s strength and makes Rakes a detestable villain. You will want him dead.
While “Lawless” has plenty of solid elements it veers off a little in the third act and becomes a victim to clichés. It doesn’t ruin the film but keeps it from becoming great.