John Hillcoat (2012)
Filmnation Entertainment, the studio behind Lawless, is only four years old. Its website claims that it’s ‘a new kind of film company – global, versatile and full-service; and is a go-to destination for many of the world’s most renowned filmmakers (including Steven Soderbergh, Terrence Malick, Pedro Almodóvar, Jeff Nichols and Sofia Coppola)’. If Lawless had been made by one of the major league Hollywood players it would be impossible not to see the frequent, showy violence in this otherwise very boring movie as the only thing about it that a big studio might see as a potential money-spinner. Lawless is adapted by Nick (Bad Seeds) Cave from a 2008 novel by Matt Bondurant called The Wettest Country in the World and perhaps the least surprising thing about Lawless (although the competition is strong) is the loss of the novel’s box-office-poisonous title. The main characters in the story are Bondurant’s ancestors, three brothers who run a moonshine outfit in Franklin County, Virginia during the Prohibition Era. Their livelihood is threatened with the arrival of Charlie Rakes, a special agent commissioned by the district attorney to declare war on the local bootleggers. The Bondurant brothers, played by Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy and Jason Clarke, are all so dull that it’s hard to work out whether they’re meant to be likeable opportunists – but it is clear from Guy Pearce’s uncharacteristic performance as Rakes that this representative of the law is the villain of the piece, not so much a killjoy as a dandified psychopath. Pearce is a good actor but not here: with his etiolated face, daft central parting and put-on voice and giggle he’s more like a Batman baddie.
Hillcoat’s previous film The Road was distinguished by Javier Aguirresarobe’s cinematography and Benoît Delhomme does a similarly fine job of lighting Lawless. The grading of the colours of the Virginia landscape is lovely; the interiors are very fine too although the effect of prettifying the thugs by delicate illumination of parts of their hats or faces is a bit silly. Lawless is genuinely illuminated by the presence of Jessica Chastain and Mia Wasikowska, even if watching them doesn’t do much beyond demonstrate that their talent and beauty are wasted here. The uninteresting men in the cast also include Gary Oldman. Shia LaBeouf plays Jack, the youngest of the Bondurant brothers; the film begins with his voiceover and a scene in which Jack is being instructed to shoot a pig, which he’s scared of doing. I suspect this opening what-it-takes-to-be-a-man moment is a microcosm of the whole story of Lawless; it certainly gives you a flavour of what’s to follow in terms of violence. The dying squeals of the pig were louder and more expressive than the grunts of approval which the man two seats to my left emitted in response to bloody highlights during the next hour. But I think I was reacting to him as much as the film when I walked out at that point.
11 September 2012
