Review of Lawless (2012) by Josh M — 21 Apr 2016

I, unlike many, really like Shia LaBeouf was super excited to see him alongside the amazing Tom Hardy. However, Lawless wasn't quite as good as I hoped.

I loved the tone and violence, but overall felt the characters, outside of Pierce's and Goldman's, weren't great. They did a great job creating the 3 Sides of this feud, but individually, not so much. Hardy's character is intimidating, yes, but is given no real opportunity to display is acting chops. He mostly wanders around, scowling, and mumbling to himself. His character epitomizes monotone in his dialogue and actions; there's no range. Same can be said for LaBeouf. I understand he's supposed to be Hardy's foil, but it's almost too much. He's supposed to be the guy we get behind, but he's too mousy and scared for you to root for him as the protagonist. He's given the subplot with a love interest to flesh his character out (and show his young, rebelliousness) but it doesn't hit. I found myself just getting annoyed with him.

The story also has a hard to follow love interest between Hardy and Chastain that did nothing for the development of Hardy's character or the giving reason for having Chastain's character in the story at all.

The climax of the movie felt rushed, too. While it perfectly embodied the chaos/messiness of the movie, it seemed ill conceived: just a simple, 5min shootout, full of missed gunshots and people falling to there knees looking into the camera. Kind of lame. Same goes for the resolution of the movie. I'm not a huge fan of narration, especially when used to wrap up a movie. Felt like a cop out. It was also pretty cheesy.

Negatives aside, I will reiterate that I loved the tone and violence. The movie felt gritty, dark, and messy. It really felt like a backyard brawl between the Bondurant brothers and the Law.