From the opening scene, Lawless establishes a world that contains two types of people: those with courage and those with cowardice. This leads, surprisingly smoothly, into the worlds of the city folk and the country folk. The “law” as it is understood exists in the parameters of the city; the country, with its “hicks,” “mountainboys,” “country boys,” and men of “injun blood” is perceived as uncultured, uncouth, and, well, lawless.
Set in the era of Prohibition (time operates a bit wackily in that we meet each character around 1920, but are, at one point, fast forwarded higgledy piggledy by references to the dust storms and the stock market crash), Lawless focuses on the Bondarant boys, Forrest (Tom Hardy), Howard (Jason Clarke), and Jack (Shia LeBeouf). Forrest and Howard are bootleggers. To be more accurate, Forrest is a badass bootlegger who refuses to pay graft to mobsters or the law, but it stoic and silent in his badassery, letting a pair of broken-in brass knuckles do most of his talking. Howard is a drunk who seems to bootleg on account of free booze – kind of like a college kid who sells pot so that he doesn’t have to pay for it.
Jack is a Bondarant boy who grew up in the country, wants to be a bootlegger, but is much more inspired by the city-dwelling gangsters who peddle hooch as opposed to his family. The conflict here isn’t as transparent as it could be. Jack doesn’t abandon his family; he tries to help them by linking them with Floyd Banner (Gary Oldman), the gangster in chief.
This part of the film is interesting, but the heart of the film centers on Forrest’s refusal to deal with Charlie Riggs (Guy Pierce), the new special agent put in charge of eliminating bootleggers, but, like the gangsters, he really just wants his cut of money, thus positioning the “law” as mere gangsters with badges, while Forrest elucidates country folk morality with wisdom like “it’s not violence that sets men apart; it’s the distance they’re willing to go.” This approach to Prohibition – or illegal activity for that matter – is not novel, but Lawless doesn’t present itself as unique.
The performances – save Pierce, but we’ll get to that in a minute – are reliable. LeBeouf made me forget about his vine-swinging, cross-jeep-fencing antics in the Indiana-Jones-that-will-not-be-named movie. Tom Hardy predictably plays the strong-silent-type with a boa of emotion writhing under his gruff exterior, and Jason Clarke is entertaining. As is Jessica Chastain, who plays Maggie, a former dancer from the city looking for comfort in the country. Her role is a bit perfunctory and really just exists to give Forrest depth, but she’s always a pleasure to watch.
The downside is Pierce, or rather, Pierce’s character. His inclusion makes sense to create the conflict between what we perceive as “law” and what we assume is without, but Riggs is terribly, unconvincingly convoluted. He is a cartoonish sadist, a presumed rapist, a dabbler in prostitutes, corrupt, speaks with a German-tinged accent, which makes him the stereotypical 1920’s villain, but seems a bit unbelievable given the state of Germany and the stigma of Germans in America at that time. There are also moments when he seethes sexuality toward the men that he hunts. I’m not against the ironically latent homosexual German in between World War I and II, but the composition seems a bit much.
Toward the final scene of the film, Riggs’ bat-shitness is so blatantly apparent that it leaves the screenwriters with little more choice than the one they make.
That aside, Lawless is worth a viewing, even though its unfortunate January 2012 release mired it in the depths of those films destined to get more views streaming on Netflix than in a theater.
