ViewGuide

Created Sep 01, 2012 10:08PM PST • Edited Dec 22, 2022 07:00PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Really Great 4.5

   Heard of the Bondurant School of Driving? Lawless is the Bondurant school of bootlegging, V8 Fords careening along dirt roads included. Indeed, the story of a legendary family of moonshiners from Western Virginia – the Bondurants – gets a monumental telling in this powerfully assured and entertaining movie.¹

   Nominally “based on real events,” Lawless soars to fictional heights reached by precious few crime movies. It’s more than enough to induct the Bondurants into the cinematic Valhalla that houses legendary crime families like the Corleones. The Bondurant’s leader combines Don Corleone’s gravitas with Sonny’s brass. Laconic in the extreme, invincible in battle, canny beyond belief – Forrest Bondurant is an instantly classic character that further burnishes Tom Hardy’s credentials as the Brando of the 21st Century.

   Curiously, this monumental story of ultimate Americana is largely the creation of non-Americans. Sure it’s based on Matt Bondurant’s historical novel about his forebears, but it’s written and directed by Aussies Nick Cave and John Hillcoat, and features Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Guy Pearce, Jason Clarke and Mia Wasikowska, two Brits and three Aussies respectively. As an American, let me just say Cheers Mates!
   -——————-

   Viewing Location: Camera 7, theater 2, row 6, center-right. Primo spot.

   ¹ Let it be said that there is no evidence connecting the Bondurant School of Driving with Bondurant bootlegging. It just seems coincidental, that’s all.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   Tom Hardy weighs-in about 200lbs in a compact 5’10", head like a fire plug, uppercut like a sledgehammer. With his Forrest Bondurant in Lawless coming on top of his Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, he’s reeling off physical performances that Stallone would envy but only De Niro could equal. Brando comes to mind. Next up: Mel Gibson’s old role in George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road. Katy, bar the door.

   Shia LaBeouf and Jason Clarke are less successful as his brothers.

   • Shia plays the runt, a role for which he’s seemingly typecast. Why is this guy a bigtime star?
   • Clarke is fine if unmemorable, notwithstanding his wild man role and extensive screentime.

   Their female counterparts are memorable, and affecting too: Jessica Chastain a “feather dancer” running from her past and waiting patiently for her future, Mia Wasikowska a Mennonite preacher’s daughter tempted by a bad boy.

   Guy Pearce stuns as a state’s attorney deeply on the take. Pearce plays this ultra-hissable villain as an extreme dandy and sociopath. Wow. As I’ve asked multiple times, why isn’t Pearce a much bigger star?

   Notables from the large supporting cast:

   • Gary Oldman as the evocatively named Floyd Banner, a Prohibition-era backwoods gangster straight from central casting. Hardy often cites Oldman as his acting hero. It’s easy to see why.
   • Noah Taylor as Oldman’s creepy henchman Gummy Walsh.
   • Dane DeHaan as bootlegging auto-tuner Cricket Pate. Think of him as NASCAR’s patron saint.

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

   Hardy is off the charts.

6. Female Stars Really Great 4.5

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Perfect 5.0

   Pearce is a villain for the ages.

10. Film

    Really Great 4.5

    Lawless marks the third collaboration between director John Hillcoat and writer Nick Cave, following The Proposition and Ghosts of the Civil Dead, both of which the estimable John Massie declared as Perfect movies.

11. Direction Perfect 5.0

    Hillcoat hits the motherload here, even more impressive than The Road, his most recent film.

12. Play Great 4.0

    A steady drip of treacle keeps it from perfection. On the plus side, Cave employs great character names, some real such as Forrest Bondurant and some surreal such as Floyd Banner, a perfect sounding Prohibition-era Most Wanted Name.

    Finally, there’s a hell of a kicker near the end. Great screenwriting, that.

13. Music Perfect 5.0

    Ralph Stanely anchors a soundtrack of serious sounding Appalachian folk music. Emmylou Harris shines on a couple of the songs, Cosmonaut in particular.

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0

    Countless perfect visuals: the forest tops of Western Kentucky in the opening; the Mennonite church service; the Tommy Gun shootout in the middle of town; and on and on.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Sordid 3.1

    Operatic violence that is by turns exhilarating and cringe inducing. Hang in there, invincible means invincible.

    Oh yeah, lots of moonshine gets drank – white lightning, clear poison. Guys sit around and get pleasantly potted. Today we’d call it alcoholism.

17. Sex Titillating 2.2

18. Violence Savage 3.7

19. Rudeness Profane 3.3

21. Reality

    Surreal 2.5

    Surreal, based on glib CircoReality, surreal PhysioReality (hales of bullets miss our anti-heros) and supernatural BioReality (one invincible character defies deathly injury multiple times).

    Cinematic reality aside, Lawless makes clear that prohibition was a really bad idea. Talk about government over-regulation. It’s a case study in how regulation can increase the trouble from the thing being regulated.

22. Circumstantial Glib 2.0

23. Biological Supernatural 3.1

24. Physical Surreal 2.5