Stars: Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Jason Clarke, Guy Pearce, Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, Gary Oldman
Director: John Hillcoat
Oscar History: None
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars
(Spoiler alerts throughout-and big ones too) The film follows three brothers (Hardy, Clarke, and LaBeouf) as they watch their Prohibition-era moonshining business become disrupted when a special agent (Guy Pearce) decides to disrupt and take control of the business, much to the chagrin of the three brothers. What ensues is a bloody mess-as the brothers, who are thought to be invincible, fight back, and then brutally watch as the twisted special agent inflicts his own brand of sadistic retribution on them. Amongst other things in the "peak-your-through-your-eyes" moments that we are subjected to are a literal tar-and-feathering, Tom Hardy's neck being slit open, and Pearce breaking the neck of a handicapped boy named Cricket. It's a rough, red-stained mess, and probably the best parts of the movie lie in those moments, as they're the most jarring, as the film desperately hopes to be The Wild Bunch. Unfortunately, with The Wild Bunch, you didn't have weak links in the cast, and with Lawless, you have two big ones.
The first, and most obvious, is LaBeouf. It's becoming harder and harder to be able to reconcile the on-screen affability that LaBeouf occasionally brings (his best performance may have been his childhood role in Even Stevens, a forgettable Disney Channel series that he brought intense amounts of goofy charm to) with the juvenile (I have a word related to a Summer's Eve product I'd rather use and is probably more on-the-nose, but I'm going to refrain to keep it classy-that Loretta Young post is watching) attitude he brings to the table in his public persona. But even if we can discard it (and again, like Lindsay Lohan and Mel Gibson, you can't hold them off forever Shia, so you should best remember that), LaBeouf is most comfortable as an everyman or a comedic sidekick, not as a dramatic lead. His story arch is laid right out in front of him to seize, but he just can't pull it off. While it's believable that he'd be angry, at no point does it seem like he can ever measure up to his two brothers, particularly Hardy, and quite frankly it seems impossible that he could compete with Pearce's lunatic of a district attorney. He gets a strong scene partner in Mia Wasikowska, who finds the the fun in their relationship and adds "strong banter with lesser costars" to her growing list of acting skills, but that's not enough. LaBeouf's attempts at crying, at mustering anger, at trying to be a man rather than a boy-on-the-way-to-becoming-a-man (in this regard, he is not helped by the fact that he still looks like he should be pledging at a frat), seem more like a reality television star who has landed a film contract than of an actor who has worked with Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone, and soon Lars von Trier of all people, and looks all the more sophomoric compared with the likes of Chastain, Hardy, and Oldman sharing the screen with him. While he's clearly a box office draw at this point, he seems to be on borrowed time at this point as a marquee pull unless he can find someway to have chops when not aided by metamorphosizing robots.
The other weak point, and probably a little less obvious, is Pearce. I haven't read any reviews of his work to see if some critics have praised his dark and OCD villain, but I found him at the highly overwrought end of the scenery-chewing scale. Pearce's character, admittedly, doesn't get the opportunities that LaBeouf's does to establish a "why" behind his particular tics and hatreds, but that doesn't mean that Pearce's loud, wildly nonsensical movements and flares make any sense in the context of the film-what causes him to be the way he is, why does he have so much hatred-where is all of that coming from? We get no sense of that from his character, and therefore his over-the-top antics seem more disjointed than anything else.
With the two principle characters on the "jeer" list, it's hard to save the film, but that doesn't mean that there aren't parts to cheer for (this isn't a one-star film). The rustic, strong music (courtesy of Willie Nelson and Nick Cave, who also wrote the filmn) sets a rousing pace that recalls Cave's genius work in Assassination of Jesse James (a film somewhat similar in tone, but not in quality, as Jesse James is near perfection). Gary Oldman, who is inexplicably in just a few scenes and has a character that largely goes nowhere, is a winking, delicious force that you can't help but love and which you wish the film would find more room for. Jessica Chastain proves once again why she's the next big actress as she plays the mysterious Maggie, a woman drawn to bad men, and who has a past that is hinted at, but never really investigated. And at the top of the pile is Hardy, a grunting caveman of a different time-he's Charles Bronson's Harmonica in the country roads of Virginia, a man of few words but many actions. I know it's a true story (based on the novel The Wettest County in the World, and why the hell didn't they go with that title instead of the hopelessly forgettable Lawless?), but a lot of artistic license focused around those three characters, and you've got yourself a solid movie. As it is, though, you're simply left leaving the theater, wanting much, much more.
What about you-did you have a strong reaction to the film, and was it inline with me or did you see the fun gangster flick that I apparently missed (based on the Rotten Tomatoes score, someone out there must have liked it)? Do you also wish that Shia LaBeouf would stick to goofball comedies and leave the dramatic acting to the Jessica Chastains and Tom Hardys who can handle it? Don't you wish they'd gone with the original film's title? And if you didn't see Lawless, what else did you catch this lovely Labor Day weekend?
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