Lawless
(USA, 115 min.)
Dir. John Hillcoat, Writ. Nick Cave
Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Jessica Chastain, Jason
Clarke, Guy Pearce, Gary Oldman, Mia Wasikowska.
It’s hard to get drunk on Lawless. This prohibition-era western sprays a wealth of
ultraviolent gunplay, but it fires blanks instead of piercing bullets. The film
makes for a disappointing reteaming of John Hillcoat and Nick Cave, the
director and screenwriter of the spectacularly gritty and hot-blooded western The Proposition. Whereas The Proposition felt like a visionary
entry in the genre, Lawless just comes
off as dull and formulaic.
Lawless offers the
true story of the three Bondurant brothers – Jack, Forrest, and Howard – who
were notorious bootleggers and peddlers of moonshine in Franklin County,
Virginia. The Bondurant boys made Franklin the wettest country in the world, so
says the book by Matt Bondurant on which the film is based, which in turn made
them the target of some nasty lawmakers who aimed to enforce the dry spell of
prohibition. Luckily, though, Howard (Jason Clarke) and Forrest (Tom Hardy) are
rough and tough hillbillies. The little Bondurant, Jack (Shia LaBeouf – not
pronounced “LaBeef” as in Matt Damon’s character in True Grit), is an innocent young man who drives the getaway car,
but dreams of being a gangster. The Bondurant boys are an odd bunch with Hardy
continuing his mumbly Joe routine from The
Dark Knight Rises (although he is far more audible this time) and with
LaBeouf being nowhere as bad as usual.
Even though the Bondurants make a fairly peaceful business
of selling their bathtub whisky throughout the county, they invite the wrath of
an ambitious city slicker lawman from Chicago. His name is Charlie Rakes and
he’s played by Guy Pearce in an uncharacteristically bizarre performance. Rakes
is a strange, effeminate weirdo who speaks in a variety of accents, the most
discernible of which is the campy drawl of aristocracy invented by Hilary Swank
for The Black Dahlia.
A few other strangers ride into town around the same time
that Rakes does. The first to appear is the big time city gangster Floyd
Banner, played by Gary Oldman (a badass, as always), who becomes Jack’s new
hero when he drives into Franklin in his swanky car and opens fire on the
thoroughfare with his Tommy gun. Then he drives away and the plot becomes an
afterthought.
The second stranger to set Franklin a sizzle – and this one
creates considerably more fire – is Maggie, a runaway showgirl played by
Jessica Chastain. Even though Maggie sports Chastain’s refined air and
classically beautiful looks, she tells Forrest that she needs to escape the
fast life of the city. Chastain seems miscast as the fugitive floozy on first
glance, but the actress is strong enough to sell Maggie’s conviction and her
dreams of a better life. Chastain’s performance is arguably the best reason to
see Lawless.
Much else in Lawless,
however, is a bit of a misfire. The overall point of the film is never really
clear, nor is the justification for the excess of gratuitous violence. As
violence begets more violence and the Bondrurants exchange fire with Rakes and
his clan, Lawless runs in circles
when it should be walking ten paces at high noon. The film utterly collapses in
its final act, too, with a climactic showdown that is little more than a
hillbilly bloodbath of cartoonish violence. Lawless
borders upon self-parody by the time the final credits roll.
Not all is hopeless in this tale of the rugged rural life,
though, if one considers the strength of Chastain’s performance, as well some
admirable efforts by the arts and craft crew. The costumes by Margot Wilson are
well tailored to the period, as is the score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. (The
soundtrack is great overall.) Lawless
also makes an interesting generic spin on the fine line between the westerner
and the gangster through Jack’s aspirations to be somebody. It’s unfortunate
that Gary Oldman’s character appears so little, since his gun-toting enforcer
is more exciting than the outlaws back in Franklin County are.
Perhaps the genre-play in Lawless proves a good example of the fight that emerged between the
westerns and the gangsters back in the early days of the Hollywood studios. The
gangster survived and became a hallmark of American cinema, best canonized by The Godfather, while the western fizzled
out until it made a comeback with Unforgiven
before it died out again. The gangster film always finds a shred of relevancy
when its take on the American dream echoes through the bullet casings that
riddle throughout. The western, on the other hand, evokes a dated morale, which
is hard to forget unless the myth is deconstructed in some visionary take akin
to Unforgiven or No Country for Old Men. Lawless,
unfortunately, falls into formula and offers little new. Perhaps if the
bootlegging racket were to be run by Gary Oldman and Jessica Chastain, Lawless might be premium whisky.
Instead, it’s simply bathtub whisky.
Rating: ★★½ (out of ★★★★★)
Lawless opens in theatres August 29th.
