Butler's Cinema Scene

“LAWLESS” My rating: B- (Opening wide on Aug. 29)

115 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Reeking of period atmosphere and packed with faces that seem to have stepped out of the WPA  photographs of Dorothea Lange (or maybe the Skid Row portraiture of Weegee), the period crime drama “Lawless” certainly looks good.

Guy Pearce

But the latest from Australia’s John Hillcoat (who gave us the Down Under western “The Proposition” and the post-apocalyptic “The Road”) is a dramatically fuzzy venture, one that clumsily attempts to balance vintage bootlegger clichés and hard-core violence with moments of oddball humor.

The subject of the screenplay by Nick Cave (the eccentric Aussie rock star who also scripted “The Proposition”) are the backwoods Bondurants of Virginia, a real-life clan that in the early years of the Depression ran a major bootlegging operation  providing illegal liquor to speakeasies all over the East Coast.

Forrest Bondurant (Tom Hardy, last seen – barely —  beneath Bane’s mask in “The Dark Knight Rises”) heads the operation. A veteran of the Great War who has a reputation as unkillable, Forrest is socially uneasy loner who says little (he croaks like Billy Bob Thornton in “Slingblade”) and radiates an arresting blend of primitive strength and intimidation. Folks hereabouts know better than to cross him.

Helping out with the heavy lifting is brother Howard (Jason Clarke), a shaggy fellow a bit too in love with the family product to be wholly reliable.

Baby brother Jack (Shia LaBeouf) is eager to get into the bootlegging game, but Forrest wants him to go slow, figuring Jack lacks the cut-throat inclinations the job demands.

Everybody in this neck of the woods respects the Bondurants and relish their product… including the local law. But the arrival of a new federal prosecutor who expects a cut of the bootleggers’ profits puts the family on the warpath. Especially when the new guy brings along a corrupt big-city agent named Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce) who sneeringly proclaims his intentions to break the clan.

Unfolding over several years, “Lawless” is less a well-made yarn than a series of interlocking stories.

Young Jack, whose ambitions exceed his skills, nevertheless is able to cut a profitable deal selling hooch to a major gangster (Gary Oldman, showing considerable restraint). And he doggedly woos a local girl (Mia Wasikowska) whose disapproving daddy leads a local congregation of Amish (or one of those beard-growin’, buggy-drivin’ sects).

Tom Hardy, Jessica Chastain

Forrest, meanwhile, lives up to his reputation for indestructibility, surviving an attack that leaves his throat cut from ear to ear.  After a few days in the hospital he goes back to work, though the ring of stitches encircling his neck make him look a bit like Frankenstein’s monster.

Forrest has a love interest, too, a dancer (Jessica Chastain) who has fled Chicago to work behind the bar at the roadhouse/restaurant the brothers operate.  Poor Forrest is so sexually skitterish (or just plain slow) that he can’t even look her in the eye. She has to crawl into his bed naked in the middle of the night before he gets the idea.

To be honest, there’s nothing particularly ingratiating about the brothers and little reason to view them charitably. Except, that is, for Pearce’s corrupt cop, an over-the-top creation oozing such high-octane sadism and malice as to make the mash-cooking Bondurants seem like solid citizens.

The fastidious agent wears perfectly pressed suits even while slogging through the woods. He can’t stand being dirty and wears lots of sweet-smelling cologne. (Is he gay, or what?) His hair is cut close on the sides and parted in the middle and his face is skull-like…imagine the Little Rascals’ Alfalfa on crank.

Pearce gives a pull-out-the-stops performance that borders on the laughable, but at least it provides the glowering Hardy with an effective nemesis.

The film’s production values are first-rate, with the Georgia locations and the sets perfectly capturing the pre-electronic (and sometimes pre-electric) era. Cave provides a score that samples both hillbilly folk and eerie low-register droning.

“Lawless” has its moments certainly, especially when the guns/blades/explosives are drawn (Hillcoat is really good at depicting gut-churning violence). But it really doesn’t add up to much.

| Robert W. Butler