In “Lawless,” a powerful portrayal of bootlegging in Prohibition era Virginia, the recurring act of violence is a brass-knuckle punch to the Adam’s apple. It ain’t pretty. The movie isn’t exactly pretty either, but it was an instant gangster classic.
True Story
“Lawless” is the more-or-less true tale of the legendary Bondurant brothers of Virginia, as recalled by their descendant, author Matt Bondurant, in his book “The Wettest County in the World.” Liquor’s against the law, but moonshine’s a-flowin‘ in them thar lawless hills. The wooded hollows look like Halloween jack-o’-lanterns in the dusk with the orange glow of whiskey-still fires.
It’s an outlaw tale about the three brothers’ stand against the local lawmen. Eldest brother Howard (Jason Clarke) is the wild child; middle son, Forrest (Tom Hardy), is a force of nature, as well as the wisest; and the youngest, Jack (Shia LaBeouf), is the sensitive runt of the litter with something to prove.
Jessica Chastain plays Maggie, a woman with a disreputable past from Chicago, looking for a simpler life in the country. She finds a fellow damaged soul in Forrest Bondurant, who carries the weight and thousand-yard-stare of having fought in the war.
Bertha (Mia Wasikowska) is a member of a conservative Christian sect called the Dunkards, who catches young Jack’s eye.
Cricket (Dane DeHaan of “Chronicle”) is a frail backwoods Leonardo Da Vinci of the whiskey still. He’s also a virtuoso grease monkey who rebuilds and muscles-up Ford Model T engines to better outstrip the cops while carting moonshine freight. A well-known (by now) footnote to illegal liquor transporting in the Southern USA is that this is where the sport of stock car racing (now known as NASCAR) had its origin.
Bringing up the rear is Gary Oldman as Floyd Banner, a classic fedora-and-tommy-gun-type urban gangster, whom the impressionable Jack strives to emulate.
The landscapes and townships are bleak yet somehow nostalgic in their 1930s Americana. Nick Cave’s songs underscore the Scots-Irish blood-feud toughness of Appalachian hill folk like the Bondurants, while paying tribute to the influence of the blues in those parts.
The most powerful music, though, is found in the church gatherings of the pious, Amish-looking, zealous Dunkard sect. Their spare, droning choir consists mainly of searing yet paradoxically emotionless stark fifth chords, and underscores their fervent commitment to a razor’s-edge path of austerity, where a fall into the abyss of sin means certain retribution.
Even though the Bondurants do many bad things, we root for them because, firstly, there weren’t many opportunities for well-paid legitimate labor in Depression era Appalachia; and secondly, special agent Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce) is such a fastidious, malicious, ultraviolent slicked-back creep that it’s not possible to like anything he does, even if it is legal.
