Lawless

Synopsis: The Bondurant brothers, Jack (Shia LaBeouf), Forrest (Tom Hardy) and Howard (Jason Clarke) are bootleggers. It’s Prohibition era in America, and they’re making a buck selling booze to whoever they can. But then lawman Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce) comes to town, and when they refuse to cut him and his boss in, he sets about taking them down.

It’s easy to see why John Hillcoat and Nick Cave took on this project: Depression-era backwoods America, a social outcast with a lot of problems and a thing for the preacher's daughter, gun totin' criminality, savage violence, etc, etc. It’s all the stuff you know Cave digs, and Hillcoat loves to shoot. They’re clearly having a lot of fun here. And so are most of the cast.

The big surprise of Lawless for me was how funny it is. Jack’s awkward courtship of Bertha the preacher’s daughter is cute and his first attempt to meet her by dropping in on a service is hysterical. Not least due to the large amount of white lightning he draws upon as courage. The casting of Shia LaBeouf as Jack proves inspired, as his past roles (think Transformers) as an awkward and somewhat ineffective hero who still gets the girl plays very effectively into lending credibility to the character. Tom Hardy is all grunts and twitches, but is as watchable as ever. And those grunts prove to be just as laugh-inducing as Shia’s gawky grandstanding. And to be fair, drawing a character out of those limiting mannerisms is quite a talent. Jason Clarke is the least well served of the actors script-wise, being less of a character and more just a cudgel for Forrest to wield, but he’s also quite likeable.

The plot ambles along quite happily, never dull but never quite entering the ripping yarn territory it occasionally seems to promise. The savagery of the violence, and the casual way it’s treated, will see some turned off too. Much as with The Proposition, Cave and Hillcoat’s previous outing together, they inhabit a savage land where your reap what you sow, something that makes the upbeat ending quite surprising, but welcome all the same.

In summary, Lawless is easily Cave and Hillcoat’s most accessible film to date. It’s a tale of crime and violence told with gentle humour and occasional savagery, but somehow it manages to hold its tone between these two extremes. And it makes you wish they’d consider adapting Cave’s Gothic South novel, And The Ass Saw The Angel.

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