Lawless

I hate to see things go to waste. Like Shia LaBeouf: very funny and charming in Even Stevens and Holes, and clearly capable of drama based on Disturbia. Then he somehow became synonymous with being smarmy, arrogant, and insufferably obnoxious. I guess he played Sam Witwicky too well. Also, "The Road" movie. Beautiful opportunity ruined by cheesy narration, terrible music, and too much happy. I hoped Lawless would be a new chance for both the Beouf and The Road director John Hillcoat. Come on, it has Tom Hardy. No such luck. Jack (Shia LaBeouf), Howard (Jason Clarke), and Forrest (Tom Hardy) Bondurant are successful bootlegging siblings in Franklin, Virginia during prohibition. The law doesn't bother them, they are well liked in town, and allegedly, Forrest is unkillable. Things shake up with two new arrivals from Chicago: Maggie (Jessica Chastain), a waitress with a past, and Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce), an eyebrow-less FBI agent who wants a cut of the business. The Bondurants refuse to bow down, and Jack tries to court Bertha (Mia Wasikowska) in his spare time. But Rakes won't give up, and when he decides to make it personal, all hell breaks loose. When your violent gangster movie features Tom Hardy as a hulking yet wise tough guy with a penchant for brass knuckles and a reputation for surviving death, why make his little brother the main character? Especially when that brother is Shia LaBeouf and is cowardly, useless, and the cause of every bad thing that happens to the characters in the film? Also, why go through the trouble of having Gary Oldman if you only have him in one scene? So yeah, the plot and characters of Lawless aren't great. In fact, both are pretty boring. God knows the actors work hard with nothing, but there's a limit. The script by Nick Cave (seriously?) is hyperbolic, shallow, and confusing, and like in The Road, Hillcoat's direction is much too slow. As I said earlier, it sucks to see things go to waste, especially an interesting story like Lawless that could've been a unique and interesting prohibition film. I admit that I'm a bit tired of big-city shootouts and fedoras. But Lawless is so endless and monotonous that I'm reconsidering that. Not much happens, but the film takes so long to do anything that I couldn't get invested. It's also relentlessly and cartoonishly violent, which is completely unnecessary and only served to take me further out of the story. Saying that I was disappointed by Lawless wouldn't be true. But at the same time, I know it could've been so much more. Especially since it's a true story, which should've been a reason to attach emotionally to the characters and narrative. Sadly everything is underdeveloped; the people are uninteresting, the dialogue is insipid, the plot is a mess, and the pacing is terrible. Lawless probably would've been silly no matter who made it, but it could at least have been more fun to watch. So stay away, because something nasty got into the moonshine.