The Prohibition-era backwoods saga Lawless brews the sort of anti-heroic tale that is now de rigueur in American crime cinema. Adapted from Matt Bondurant’s 2008 historical novel The Wettest County in the World, the film is loosely based on the daring and appallingly violent bootlegging exploits of the writer’s Franklin County, Virginia ancestors, brothers Forrest (Tom Hardy), Howard (Jason Clarke), and Jack Boudurant (Shia LaBeouf). The film presents each sibling as a well-worn type: Forrest is the prideful stoic with an outlaw’s code; Howard is the lethal but loyal junkyard dog; and Jack is the restless opportunist who wants to prove himself (especially to Forrest).
In the main, Lawless is the story of the brothers’ conflict with preening sociopath Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce), an enforcer tasked by the Chicago mob to take over the county’s moonshine outfits by means both pseudo-legal and blatantly criminal. The Boudurants, who have a B’rer Rabbit-like reputation as downright un-killable son-of-bitches, are of course resistant to Rakes’ persuasions, and a brushfire war of escalating retribution quickly ensues. Jack provides the narration for this tale, and it is his worshipful yet resentful attitude towards his older brother Forrest—as well as his callow lust for wealth—that colors the tone of the film.
Australian director John Hillcoat is in familiar, brutal territory with Lawless. His bloody 2005 Outback western The Proposition echoes Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah, while evoking a distinctly Aussie atmosphere of forlornness and savagery. His 2009 adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece The Road, meanwhile, while unavoidably inferior to its literary source, is a commendably exact rendering of the novel’s tone and themes. The memory of Hillcoat’s self-assured, agreeably volatile hand in these works is one reason that Lawless feels so underwhelming. His latest feature is blandly competent, but little else. Certainly, there is no narrative frisson to be found in the script by musician Nick Cave, which seems to have been assembled from genre tropes that were creaky decades ago.
Faithfulness to well-established forms need not be a defeating attribute, but in Lawless, the familiarity of each story beat and character contour merely seems lazy. Of course the perpetually soused Howard will arrive too late to back up Forrest in a showdown with Rakes’ goons. Of course Jack’s guileless, gawky partner, Cricket (Dane DeHaan), will fall prey to Rakes, triggering a moist-eyed quest for vengeance. Of course both Forrest’s ridiculously gorgeous clerk Maggie (Jessica Chastain) and Jack’s prim Christian crush Bertha (Mia Wasikowska) will be threatened and victimized, but will resolutely stand by their men, because that is the role of women in such a story. Such staleness might be forgivable were it mitigated with enticing characterization or a sense of playfulness. Lawless offers neither, seemingly content to coast on dreary convention and the dubious leading-man talents of LeBeouf.
