An odd but enjoyable mix was what Lawless was for me. John Hillcoat’s (The Road, The Proposition) film is filled with violence, humour, tension, and good storytelling. All these things are bookended by the performances of the good guy (Tom Hardy) and the very icky bad guy (Guy Pearce – Prometheus, The Hurt Locker). Without these two the middle stuff would be afloat without any direction. The two performances could not be more different. Tom Hardy’s is completely minimalist. Bringing cool but scary to a new level, he probably grunted (with a few of them garnering laughter from a couple of members of the audience) more that he spoke. It has been very interesting so far watching Hardy’s career develop. All the way on the other end of the spectrum was Guy Pearce’s performance. Talk about over the top and chewing up the scenery. Pearce was the bad guy and he wrung every ounce of creepy and evil out of it that he could. Black shoe polish in his hair, leather gloves, no eyebrows and a very creepy way of speaking. A fearless and entertaining performance. What all these aspects do is grab hold of your attention and do not let go for almost two hours.
Amidst all the gritty realism of the film is the beauty of how it looks. The colours explode off the screen as the camerawork is so sharp. The sets are authentic and the costumes are not only accurate but also look used, if you know what I mean. This beauty is juxtaposition with the violence of the film. Plenty of heads are cracked, bodies are pierced by bullets, faces are beaten to a pulp, and even a neck is slashed. Obviously the prop guy was kept busy producing the litres of fake blood spilled. At times you have to turn away from the screen because the violence is so gruesome.
Not a deep film. You won’t leave it thinking about the meaning of life or anything like that. It is just violent and entertaining. Certainly not original but that did not matter in this instance.
Based on a true story about the three Bondurant brothers, Jack (Shia LaBeouf – Transformers, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps), Forrest (Tom Hardy – Warrior, Inception) and Howard (Jason Clarke – Public Enemies, Death Race), who run a bootlegging operation in the backwoods of Virginia during Prohibition. It sounds like a story that we’ve all seen a million times. Redneck brothers try to keep one step ahead of the authorities. Criminals who we end up siding with despite the fact that they are just as violent as the bad guys and what they are doing is illegal.
