LAWLESS

In the late 20's and early 30's the mountains of Franklin County, Virginia where so rife with bootleggers that at night the fires from the stills lit up the mountains like fireflies. This is the setting for John Hillcoat's new film Lawless. It centers on the area’s most infamous moonshiners, the three Bondurant brothers.

The leader is Forrest (Tom Hardy), a hulking man who, in Goodfallas parlance, doesn't have to move for anybody. Jason Clarke plays Howard, the muscle of the group. When Forrest says "sick 'em," Howard sicks 'em. Sometimes he does it when he hasn't been told. I guess stump whiskey does that to a man. The youngest is the put upon lookout, Jack (Shia LeBeouf). Over the years, a legend has grown up around the three boys, particularly Forrest, that they are invincible.

Of course, the problem with being invincible is that people are going to want to test that. In comes a special deputy named Charlie Rakes (Guy Pierce). Rakes is an odd man with his shaved eyebrows and a 3 inch gap in his hair part. His goal isn’t to stop the bootleggers but rather to extort a toll from them. The Bondurant’s refuse and face an all out war with Rakes and his small army of cops and hired thugs.

This all plays out predictably right down to the “look how well we’re doing” montage of the Brothers solidifying their rural empire. Still, Hillcoat and screenwriter Nick Cave (he also provides the soundtrack) create a striking sense of immediacy here. This isn’t some generic, homogenized vision of the late 20’s, this feels like the real thing. The roosters fighting in the yard, the fog rolling in over the giant willow trees, and the Bell brand jars the Bondurant brothers use to store their White Lightning whiskey are all little details that help the film live and breathe.

The ensemble do a mostly commendable job. Hardy’s mono-syabic performance is menacing and weirdly warm at the same time. Jessica Chastain does some nice work with her underwritten character, and Guy Pearce’s is a very cartoonish villain, but holds back just enough to keep from going off the rails. Shia LeBeouf on the other hand is just okay; he’s made leaps in his acting ability, but not bounds. It looks as if we're going to be stuck with LeBeouf as a leading man for a while, but he's yet to demonstrate that he's earned that privilege.

The absolute best thing about the film is the exquisite soundtrack put together by Cave and Warren Ellis. The two rockers have provided moody instrumentals for several of Hillcoats other movies but here the pair have put together a house band, The Bootleggers, and have created one of the best roots soundtracks since O Brother Where Art Thou. The band, with the help of guest stars like Ralph Stanley and Emmylou Harris, cover a wide array of songs by Link Wray, John Lee Hooker and even The Velvet Underground, while throwing in a few originals too. It’s a slam-bang soundtrack that oozes personality form every note.

Lawless is a solid crime film held back by it’s own formula and a mediocre lead performance. However the verisimilitude with which the period, not to mention the violence, is portrayed coupled with a fantastic soundtrack help balance out the flaws. At the very least you should pick up the album.

Grade: B

Here's a sample of The Bootleggers cover of Link Wray's "Fire and Brimstone"

LOCKOUT

Lockout, the new thriller form that prolific purveyor of pulp Luc Besson, is cinematic junk food. The kinda thing our mothers told us would rot our brains. I would normally embark on an elaborate breakdown of the plot, however this film can easily be broken down into three sentences:

President's daughter. Space prison. One Man!

If you can't make up your mind based on those sentences, I don't know if I can help you. If you're asking what the president's daughter (Maggie Grace) is doing visiting a super-maximum security space prison, you are already asking too many questions. The One Man who can save her is known only as Snow and is played by Guy Pearce (Memento). The fact that Snow is a CIA agent who's been set-up and now has one last chance to redeem himself by saving the president's daughter goes without saying. I only wrote it down to fill space.

Okay, so Lockout doesn't get a lot of points for originality. The fact that the film so closely resembles Escape From New York and 1,000 other B-movies isn't as much a detriment as it should be. It helps that Lockout is directed with a measure of personality by James Mather and Stephen St. Leger. The action scenes are well done but occasionally have a touch too much shaky-cam. Some of them are actually kinda memorable, and even the ones that aren't have a goofy charm to them.

Adding to that goofy charm are the one-liners. It's not so much that Snow always has something funny to say, it's that he always has 10 funny things to say. My favorites being "Everyone loves me, just ask your wife." and "Don't talk to strangers, shoot them." I always wonder if action heroes come up with all these comments off the cuff or if some of them are written down in advance. Anyway Pearce is a blast and makes Snow into the kind of politically incorrect jerk/bad-ass that every 10 year old want's to be. Maggie Grace is also quite charismatic and it's to the filmmakers credit that they resisted the temptation to sexualize her character.. Both these actors are great stars, but the world hasn't realized it yet.

Lockout is a silly, silly film. It's got every cliché in the book but it hardly matters. Sometimes you don't have to be original. Sometimes you don't even have to try hard to distinguish yourself. Sometimes just being a lot of fun is enough.

Grade: B