Lawless

Lawless is at its core an old-fashioned genre piece, albeit a hybrid of the heroic anti-establishmentism of the gangster film and the encroaching civilisation frequently dealt with in revisionist westerns. Based on Matt Bondurant's book, The Wettest County in the World, about the exploits of his grandfather and great-uncles in Prohibition-era Virginia, it reunites John Hillcoat and Nick Cave, the team behind The Proposition, in another violent and morally challenging tale about life on the fringes of the world.

The Bondurant brothers, Forrest (Tom Hardy), Howard (Jason Clarke) and Jack (Shia LaBeouf), are part of a rural Virginian community cashing in on Prohibition by keeping the surrounding area in moonshine. While at a local level the distilling network is a generally accepted and relatively benevolent practice, it is feeding a catastrophic crime wave in the cities; it's clear that it's only a matter of time before the chaos rebounds upon the quiet rural community at its source. One day the Commonwealth Attorney turns up with his vicious enforcer, Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce), in tow. He wants to bring the illicit business under his control by coercing the bootleggers into working for him. The Bondurants, led by Forrest, refuse on principle; the Attorney departs, but leaves Rakes to begin a long war of attrition with the brothers and other local distillers.

While the plot isn't particularly strong or forceful, and the characters' motivations can occasionally get lost among the mumbling and drinking, Lawless is a beautifully designed and acted film. The moonshine war is interweaved with the Bondurants' personal tribulations in a way that damages the drive of the plot but succeeds in bringing the characters to life: an important achievement when even the good guys indulge in the odd bit of vengeful castration. Jack's endless quest to prove himself to his older brothers is well portrayed by LaBeouf, who does a nice line in cocky insecurity, and his and Forrest's romantic subplots are successfully worked into events so that they don't feel like distractions. Guy Pearce sneers and twitches like an aloof rodent as Rakes; whenever he's on screen he seems an inch away from committing some horrific sexual abuse.

Lawless doesn't come close to The Proposition, I think simply because it's an adaptation and Cave has trouble working someone else's material into something as coherent. Lawless is sprawling where The Proposition is sparse, and as such doesn't have the it's consistency in tone or theme, even if there are similarities in their dealing with moral corruption on both sides of the law. Fans of Cave might miss the baroque, intensely literate dialogue of the earlier film (equally, non-fans might thank Christ it's gone), but there are still flashes of his preoccupations throughout: a scene where Jack, in pursuit of Bertha (Mia Wasikowska), goes drunk to the church where her father is preaching, with it's swooning and chanting, and conflation of religious and erotic imagery, is quite easy to imagine in the form of one of his songs. Overall, Lawless is artistically flawed, but solid entertainment nontheless.
Tom