Decidedly unconvinced that anything (other than Transformers) starring Shia LeBeouf could be any good, I was skeptical... but this was a surprise, in that it was not only an interesting, well-crafted movie with some great acting, but LeBeouf didn't ruin it at all. He was pretty good.
Not usually prone to comment on directors, but on the films 'themselves', I'm nevertheless going to say that part of what I thought was intelligent and engaging about Lawless was its almost Verhoeven-like displays - and critique - of violence. This was coupled with an interesting martial-arts-B-movie approach to the consequences of violence, especially killing: interestingly, while I was watching it, the film struck me as being horrifically violent and nastily so - which I didn't enjoy one bit. But I realised that in fact it was - a la B-movies of Van Damme and his ilk - actually very moralising in terms of its attitude to violence, and especially to murder. It did display some horrific violence - and 'even' the sympathetic characters (the Bondurant brothers, played by Tom Hardy, Le Beouf and Jason Clarke) made me sick at times, and Hardy's character, Forrest, was particularly violent. (The baggy-cardi and knuckleduster combo was seriously alarming!) But as the film went on, it was interesting to see how the plot revolved very closely around the notion that actual death - murder, rather than 'mere' violence on bodies - was not to be tolerated, in the ethos of the film (and, it suggested, of the Bondurants and their community). In a not always entirely convincing way at times, but in quite a forceful way, the film presented the notion that while 'boys will be boys' (especially with the motivating context of Prohibition and those in power on the make), some behaviour is simply unacceptable. Since this is not the norm in mainstream action films, so often, I kind of liked this about the film: to me, its cameraderie with B-movies on this point made it far more engaging to me than most films of its genre. (The genre of Lawless, by the way, is something of a hybrid gangster-western mix.)
Of course Verhoeven's films tend to critique violence precisely by having dead bodies everywhere: Lawless doesn't do that, but what is similar is the display of excessive, extravagantly cinematic violence committed on bodies. Displays that promise to actually make one think about the actual violence committed, rather than just accept it as another narrative device. The opening image (of killing a pig) resonates far more once the film makes this clear, too: initially I just found it horrific and pointless - and the way it's echoed at the end is problematic, for sure. But at the same time, it plays well with the film's overall approach to violence, and its ... seriousness, for want of a better term.
Elements of the story are somewhat naff and tired - the 'crippled' character, the romance for our boy LeBeouf (although the church sequence is hilarious!), the ex prostitute escaping the city. At the same time, their very generic nature adds something to the film, and to its criticism of violence and what it does to people.
Speaking of ex prostitutes, the central female character in this film, Maggie Beaumont (Jessica Chastain - who was in the horrifically awful and pretentiousTree of Life), does not get to do an awful lot. But she's crucial to us not hating Forrest, and also to his enduring legend; it's true that her character is defined almost entirely by her sexuality - she was a prostitue, she is raped, and her primary role is as a romantic interest who 'develops' Forrest's character for us. And I find some of that hard to take - especially where she ends up at the conclusion of the film. But, frankly, it could be far worse: as it is, she at least takes some control over her life - in the limited ways available to her - and the camera at least doesn't ogle her.
Hard to comment on this movie without mentioning Guy Pearce. He over-acts his socks off - and it pretty much works. He has to, really, as Gary Oldman also features (if briefly). Anyway, I did quite enjoy the contempt he expresses for all the other characters on screen, and his sense of self-importance and invincibility (opposed to Forrest's mythical inability to die). Maybe a bit over-done, but still enjoyable if you just go with it and accept the pantomime villain moments as part of his panache.
The detail in the writing of the characters is nice, and unsurprising from Nick Cave. Certainly it's a result of the precise writing, I think - along with acting that complements it beautifully - that makes the film successfully embody Cave's comment (reported in the Guardian) that "Lawless is not so much a true story as a true myth".
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