John Hillcoat describes his movie as “a western as well as a gangster film”. The resulting hybrid certainly has its moments, yet lacks the tension of a real classic.
Shia LaBeouf plays Jack Bondurant, the youngest of three bootlegging brothers in Prohibition America who finds his life turned upside down by the arrival of a disdainful, corrupt government official, Special Deputy Rakes (Guy Pearce). Jack, who admires Chicago hoods like Floyd Banner (Gary Oldman), wants to challenge Rakes head on. His brother, Forest (Tom Hardy), urges caution. He knows not to underestimate the unjust Law.
Nick Cave’s script is full of weird and wonderful words (my favourites: “jingle-brained” and “hinkey”). The visuals are gorgeously asymmetrical and the soundtrack jolting (you may find yourself wondering what blue-grass legend Ralph Stanley is singing — it’s Velvet Underground’s drug ode, White Light, White Heat).
Alas, the central, increasingly bloody conflict between Forest and Rakes is all too familiar. One is an earthy man of the people, who’s kind to women and children and spills blood in a good cause; the other a perverse city slicker who’s nasty to the bone. Hardy and Pearce, brilliant actors used to playing more complex types, go into a kind of embarrassing Method overdrive by way of compensation. Hardy mumbles like a mad-man (as in The Dark Knight Rises, he’s often unintelligible). Pearce, eyebrow-less, is forever dabbing at his clothes. The more they try to dazzle us, the more cartoonish their characters seem.
An impressively natural performance from LaBeouf (and a tantalisingly unreadable one from Oldman), can’t hide the film’s blandly conservative core. Compare it to period shockers like Bonnie and Clyde or McCabe & Mrs Miller and you realise what’s missing. For a movie called Lawless, this one’s awful happy to stick to the rules.
