Lawless (2012)

• Directed by John Hillcoat.

• Screenplay by Nick Cave, based on the book “The Wettest County in the World” by Matt Bondurant.

• This is a re-watch. And here’s the thing:

I saw this in theaters when it first came out, and it is not, by any means, a perfect movie. It feels overly long, it ranks up there as one of the most memorably violent & bloody films I’ve seen, & it features an oh-my-God, why-is-he-still-here villain who is annoyingly one-dimensional in his evilry.

That said – it also features one of my favorite acting performances of all time. Yes, that’s right, you read that correctly. Of all time. And thus I’m re-watching it, so I can formally record somewhere how drop-dead masterful Tom Hardy is in the role of Forrest Bondurant.

• Of course, there are other solid things about this film – the sets & costumes are fantastic & Jessica Chastain’s performance is impressively high quality, as well.

• So…as you may have already deduced from the surname shared by the source material’s author & Tom Hardy’s character – the film is “based on a true story.” It follows the Bondurants – brothers Forrest (the middle child, played by Hardy), Howard (the eldest, played by Jason Clarke), & Jack (the youngest, played by Shia LaBeouf), who are bootlegging moonshiners residing in Franklin County, Virginia during the Depression and – perhaps even more significantly – Prohibition.

(For the record, novelist Matt’s paternal grandfather is/was Jack Bondurant; Howard & Forrest were his grand-uncles.)

• “My brother Forrest once said – nothin’ can kill us. We can’t never die,” Jack’s introductory voiceover begins.

“Reason being that in the Great War – my eldest brother Howard saw his entire battalion drown in the sea. Every last one of ’em. He was the only survivor. And Forrest, well – that same year, Spanish Lady Flu damn near wiped out the entire state. Got Ma and Pa and Forrest – but against all odds, he somehow managed to fight it off. So you could see why he felt that way.”

(Gotta love a good old-fashioned immortality legend, amiright?)

• Our other primary characters are:

Maggie Beaufort (Chastain), a beautiful, tough-as-nails city girl who – in fleeing some undisclosed (but seemingly pretty dark) city-girl problems – finds herself in the employ of the Bondurants, at the bar-ish joint they run on the side (front?) of their moonshining racket.

Cricket (Dane DeHaan), Jack’s BFF, with whom he is (less than wisely) attempting to develop his own moonshine; the pair of them seem dangerously unaware and/or unprepared for the layers of serious responsibility that accompany such a morally shadowy racket.

Floyd Banner (Gary Oldman), a notorious bigshot crime-man/bootlegger who has enough power to gun down competitors and/or enemies in the middle of town, in broad daylight, without it being a big deal.

Charley Rakes (Guy Pearce), a governmental enforcer sent in from Chicago to help clean up the local bootlegging industry. He – quite simply & quite transparently – is evil. Period, the end. No more discussion necessary.

• I adore the wordless simplicity of several of Forrest & Maggie’s early interactions. First, the way she moves his hat, in passing, to hang on the back of his chair…only to have him move it back to the table without comment, two seconds later (Clarke’s performance of Howard’s reaction to witnessing this, from his position next to Forrest at the table, is also delightful in its subtlety). Second, when Rakes the Evil comes around for the first time – the way Forrest looks from him to Maggie (who is already looking intently at Forrest), as he (Rakes) creepily saunters near Maggie’s chair on the porch. Moments like this – that subsist entirely on expression, gesture, & an unarticulated energy – can easily fall flat or sail by without notice, in the hands of a novice or less-talented actor…but in the hands of Hardy, they become nuggets of treasure that make you not want to blink and/or breathe for the duration of the film, for fear of missing a flicker of eye movement & the potential richness or significance it might convey.

• Rakes the Evil figures out the way to harm-target the (himself) indomitable Forrest is by instead focusing on the (comparative) weaklings Forrest cares about: Jack & Cricket.

I hate the ‘Beating of Jack via Butt of Rakes’s Rifle’ scene. It is brutal to watch – and it is a prime example of why I tend to avoid seeing (or maybe: re-seeing) violent movies. Close-up, one-on-one “fights” in which one party is unarmed & the other has a limitless cruelty tank are, to me, the absolute worst. 

Here, it’s like…Rakes, man – we get it. You’re a rotten Evil. We got that when you face-bashed Jack the 3rd & 4th times…and the 8th & 9th…must we go for face-bash #20 (or whatever it winds up being)??? This gets us into devastating levels of Grossville, and I in no way support it.

[Insert long, loud “Booooooooo” here.]

• The key to Hardy’s performance is (perhaps pretty obviously) the voice he’s chosen to give Forrest. The quiet growl he’s able to achieve – accompanied by a rhythmic deliberateness of pacing & tone – is just…magic. His gestures, the speed & length of his stride, the measured intensity with which he looks at (& absorbs) both people & his surroundings – are all perfectly matched to his speaking patterns – and the combined effect is positively mesmerizing. Forrest/Hardy looks at people with a rhythm – he conveys all of his words’ meaning with the pauses in between them – and makes stillness this electric, almost viscerally palpable thing.

• DumbDumb Jack wanting to prove himself by stealing slit-throat (by the way: ew), hospital-bed-contained Forrest’s key & taking Cricket to do a nighttime moonshine deal with some scary-ass out-of-towners?

It is NOT worth it, Little Brother! Just find your own ‘doesn’t require grit’ pathway, as both of your siblings have advised you to do on multiple recent occasions! You are a trouble-brewing fool, my dude…and my patience for you at this moment is zero!

• When Jack returns from this ill-conceived (y’all, aforementioned crime-man Floyd Banner is there, and Jack & Cricket almost get shot dead after digging their own graves) deal, I love how Forrest, Howard, and Maggie are waiting as a trifecta for him at the front of the house.

I also love the way Hardy delivers the line “What’s this?” while looking off into the distance, instead of at the question’s object – i.e., the address-bearing slip of the paper in Jack’s hand.

• By the way, Mia Wasikowska is in this film, too, as the focus of Jack’s romantic hopes & affections, Bertha Minnix (who is the foot-washing daughter of a local preacher).

(Her character is barely given anything to do – but for what it’s worth, she plays that little bit well & manages to fit herself nicely into the small, somewhat lame space that’s been carved out opposite Jack.)

• In terms of bloodiness, this movie is just as nasty as I remembered, you guys. Forrest’s gift bag of retribution for Rakes the Evil? Jesus Christ. Vomitsville.

• The music of this film is extremely well-curated & excellently placed. (There are lots of music credits given – but my guess is that the primary takeaway should be that having Nick Cave as your screenwriter & one of your producers definitely has its perks.)

• The Bondurants’ downfall is (of course) eventually caused by Jack’s desire to be a Big Moonshine Man of Impressiveness in the eyes of Miss Bertha. One afternoon, Rakes the Evil & his forest-lurking henchmen follow Jack directly into their deep-woods still setup, when Jack decides to bring Bertha there on a date. 

• Somewhat funnily, Lookout Howard alerts Jack, Cricket, & poor Clean-Feet Bertha of the Law Gang’s presence by howling like a wild animal…not dissimilar to the signal howling used by Shia LaBeouf on multiple occasions (4 years down the road) in AMERICAN HONEY (2016).

• Poor, poor Cricket. His death makes me very sad. What an (again – unshakably one-dimensional) evil that villainous Charley Rakes is.

• The scene between Forrest & Maggie (when Jack’s driven off on a Revenge Mission in Cricket’s car & Maggie is pleading with Forrest not to follow him) is the best goddamn scene in the movie. The beats of silence in between the dialogue exchanged by Hardy & Chastain – as well as the emotional power each actor puts into the eye contact the characters share – make for a truly magnificent scene.

Hardy & Chastain are perfectly paired in this film. Both have this quiet – but undeniable – strength of presence that feels akin to & in balance with the other…and I would love to see them in an another project together, at some point in the future.

• It’s lovely how when the Bridge Showdown transpires – all of the backwoods Moonshiners pull a reverse HIGH NOON (1952) & surprise-arrive at a moment’s notice to aid the Bondurants in their Ultimate Time of Need.

• In this same ending sequence, Guy Pearce goes preposterously over the top with his psycho villain-yelling. He’s such a one-note Bad Dude (what is interesting about an Evil bellow-screaming in a ‘I’m losing it!’ way, when the tensions get high?) and I think it is easily the worst, most narrative-ruining part of the film. (And – to be clear – this criticism is far less about Pearce’s performance than it is about the way the character was written – i.e., very heavy handedly & with almost zero imagination.)

• If you haven’t seen LAWLESS – you need to see it for Tom Hardy. Be prepared to alternatively avert & roll your eyes at quite a bit of the rest – but Hardy’s performance makes it worth it. The man is a modern gem, y’all…and definitely deserves to be celebrated as such.