Dir: John Hillcoat
Starring: Tom Hardy,
Shia LeBeouf, Guy Pearce
John
Hillcoat teams up with Nick Cave on writing duty for the first time since the
brilliant The Proposition for a based
on a true story tale of a prohibition family.
Jack Bondurant (Shia LeBeouf) is the youngest
of the three Bondurant brothers, a bootlegging family in depression era
Franklin County. Forrest Bondurant (Tom Hardy) is the formidable patriarchal figure
of the family keeping them together and Howard Bondurant (Jason Clarke) is the
troubled muscle of the three. Trouble comes in the form of Officer Charlie
Rakes (Guy Pearce) who has come to town to stamp down on bootlegging.
Hillcoat
has assembled a great cast with everyone working their best. Guy Pearce is
great as a hugely unlikable bad guy with the right amount of sliminess and barely
covered brutal violence. Gary Oldman, Jessica Chastain and Mia Wasikowska do
their best in their unfortunately underused roles. If you’re worried about Shia
LeBeouf’s acting ability judged on his previous efforts in multiple blockbuster
hits then you need not worry as he plays Jack well. He conveys the naive
arrogance of thinking he can play at being one of the big boys and feels young
and inexperienced enough to be downtrodden when the big boys fight back. Tom
Hardy again impresses as Forrest, the Bondurant brother trying to keep it all
together, a man of who can be gentle and fatherly yet also violent and brutal. The period details and setting are all great and creates an interesting community.
Lawless has enough to keep you
interested and there are some interesting scenes of revenge and of character
drama but the film doesn’t have the thrust that it should. It tries to give us
a drama about a family and a crime story at the same time but they don’t work
together as a cohesive whole. Some of the family story should have been trimmed
down to give the Guy Pearce storyline more thrust and weight. As such it meanders
a little. Also the Subplot with Gary Oldman’s criminal leader Floyd Banner is
introduced and crops up again occasionally but is never resolved and never
really leads to anything. It only serves to show Jack Bondurant’s attempts to
work his way dangerously into the business and is a waste of a potentially good
plot thread and the great acting of Gary Oldman.
Entertaining
enough with some good acting and interesting parts but overall Lawless isn’t as interesting as you hope
it will be. A disappointment but let’s hope Hillcoat and Cave continue working
together as they still have so much more to give.
3 Out of 5 Buttons
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