Lawless

As I was watching Lawless, I found myself admiring how the film was made more than the story that it was telling. The plot, based on a true story of three brothers who ran a moonshine business and stood up to some crooked lawmen back in the Prohibition Era, should be engaging by all accounts. But, the characters are thin, and I just didn't really care for the brothers or their girlfriends. There are a lot of good actors up on the screen giving their all, but the screenplay often does them no favors.

The film opens by introducing us to the Bondurant Brothers, three devil-may-care men living in Franklin County, Virginia in the early 1930s. They're famous for two things - the moonshine business that they run, and the fact that they consider themselves invincible, due to the number of times they have cheated death. The unofficial leader of the boys is Forrest (Tom Hardy), who almost does live up to his "invincible" reputation when he gets his throat slit by a couple of thugs, and he ends up walking all the way to the hospital, his hand covering his wound. The middle and least interesting of the three is Howard (Jason Clarke), who the screenplay forgets to develop into a character. And finally, there is the youngest, Jack (Shia LaBeouf), who serves as the film's narrator, and is the main focal point to the story.

Over the past five years, Shia LaBeouf has mainly been acting solely in mindless special effects spectacles like the Transformers movies, so Lawless represents his first real acting effort in a long time. There's nothing wrong with his performance here, but his character of Jack never demands much attention of us. He has a passion for fast cars, flashy clothes, and gangsters. He also pines after the lovely Bertha (Mia Wasikowska), the timid daughter of the local preacher. This romantic subplot seems shoehorned in, as we learn very little about the two, nor do we ever feel any chemistry at any time in the film. The same goes for Forrest's relationship with his girl, Maggie (Jessica Chastain). While she seems like an interesting character (she's an exotic dancer who fled from Chicago to find a life away from the gangster violence), the movie never fully develops her into a full character. In the case of both Wasilkowska and Chastain, there is nothing to fault about their screen presence. They're just short changed by the script.

Eventually, the Bondurant Brothers find their business and their lives threatened by the arrival of a deputy from Chicago named Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce). Charlie is so oily and immediately sleazy, he's the type of villain who may as well be wearing a sign around his neck reading, "HI! I'M THE VILLAIN!" As soon as Charlie arrives, he starts threatening the Bondurants and the rest of the local bootleggers to pay him a fee in order to get him to look the other way. Those who do not comply are met with brutal violence, which the movie likes to show in great detail. Naturally, the three brothers refuse, and a war breaks out, which eventually gets the attention of famed gangster, Floyd Banner (Gary Oldman), who is supposed to side with the Bondurants. Unfortunately, Floyd is so underwritten and his part is so small, he makes no impression whatsoever, and Oldman is essentially doing a walk-on here.

Lawless has been made with a considerable amount of skill. It looks and feels real in its setting, giving us a sense of being in a certain time period. And the violence, while often very grisly and extreme, feels stylistic, and not exploitive or offensive. The problem lies solely and complete with the script by Nick Cave, and its inability to make us care about the people inhabiting the story. It seems fascinating, and it seems like it should be engaging. And at times, it is. There are some tense moments throughout the film that got me close to recommending this. But, in the end, I just could not shake the fact that the characters and various subplots that are supposed to strengthen them had no effect on me.

I must admit, I admired that the movie did not try to completely romanticize the Bondurant Brothers. They are criminals, and they can be quite ruthless. However, the law (represented by the slimy Charlie Rakes) is much worse, so they come across as the lesser of two evils. This could have been intriguing, but the character of Charlie is so one-sided in his evil nature, it's just not as interesting as it should be. Guy Pearce plays the role of Charlie almost as if he is channeling Dick Dastardly. I half expected him to take Jack's girlfriend, and tie her to the railroad tracks during the climax. In order for the character to work, he needs a much less broad approach. And in order for the Bondurants to be interesting, we need to actually know about them.

Maybe this movie needed to be longer, so it could flesh out the characters more. In its current state of just short of two hours, it feels incomplete. I admired this movie in a lot of ways, but those pesky script problems kept on popping up, and preventing me from fully enjoying it. Lawless needed another rewrite or two before it was ready to go before the cameras.

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