Law­less

You don’t say ​‘no’ to Cannes. Which is how John Hillcoat’s moon­shine dra­ma found itself in the wrong place at the wrong time, earn­ing an unde­served rep­u­ta­tion as one of the festival’s dis­ap­point­ments. Because Law­less is sin­gu­lar­ly unsuit­ed to the jaun­diced expec­ta­tions of the Croisette: too pulpy, too pop­py, too vio­lent­ly unre­strained. It’s an impul­sive, imper­fect depic­tion of fam­i­ly, mas­culin­i­ty and author­i­ty – free­wheel­ing but episod­ic, punchy but nev­er quite persuasive.

Based on Matt Bondurant’s com­pul­sive­ly read­able bio-saga, ​‘The Wettest Coun­ty in the World’, Law­less pitch­es us into the creek- streaked wood­lands of Pro­hi­bi­tion-era Franklin Coun­ty, Vir­ginia. It’s here that the Bon­durant broth­ers, For­rest (Tom Hardy), Jack (Shia LaBeouf) and Howard (Jason Clarke), are mak­ing a name for them­selves as rough­house roy­al­ty in this moon­shine king­dom; where every out-house and hol­low hides a cop­per-bot­tomed whisky still. Liquor flows out of these moun­tains like rain­wa­ter, like the run-off from a storm of cor­rup­tion, mon­ey and blood.

The Bon­durants are as deep-root­ed in this coun­ty as the pines that lichen the land­scape. Howard, the eldest, is a Great War vet­er­an and ragged, rag­ing drunk; Jack is the young runt des­per­ate to make some­thing of him­self; but it’s For­rest who watch­es over them, mute and mas­sive and redo­lent of vio­lence. Tom Hardy is cast close to per­fec­tion but almost to a fault.

His For­rest is a cre­ation of implaca­ble will and sim­ple truths. ​“I’m a Bon­durant,” he intones, ​“and we don’t lay down for nobody.” He appears cut from the earth itself, like some back­woods ele­men­tal, a char­ac­ter more imag­ined than performed.

Still car­ry­ing his War­rior ton­nage, Hardy imbues For­rest with brute ani­mal pres­ence. But he’s too brood­ing, too off lim­its – to him­self, to his fam­i­ly, to the audi­ence – to invest him with real vital­i­ty. As Law­less unfolds, the gut­tur­al grunts that make up the bulk of Forrest’s dia­logue become less tac­i­turn, more unin­ten­tion­al­ly comic.

So it’s left to oth­ers to take cen­tre stage, and it’s here that Law­less comes into its own as an ensem­ble dra­ma. There’s Gary Old­man who deserves more screen time than he gets as Floyd Ban­ner, the flam­boy­ant gang­ster who gives Jack a break in the boot­leg­ging busi­ness. There’s Jes­si­ca Chas­tain as Mag­gie, the Windy City strip­per search­ing for some­thing in Franklin Coun­ty that she finds in For­rest. There’s Chronicle’s Dane DeHaan, whose stud­ied naivety as dam­aged still hand Crick­et Pâté recalls Leonar­do DiCaprio’s break­through role in What’s Eat­ing Gilbert Grape?

And then there’s Spe­cial Agent Char­lie Rakes, brought men­ac­ing­ly, minc­ing­ly to life by Hill­coat reg­u­lar Guy Pearce. Rakes, gun hand of the state’s venal author­i­ties, brings a new vision of progress to the ​“fuck­ing hicks” in Vir­ginia: a con­fed­er­a­tion of moon­shin­ers, a grand rack­et with the politi­cians at the cen­tre, suck­ing up the dirty mon­ey bil­low­ing out of the mountains.

If Rakes intro­duces a clash of val­ues to the coun­ty – a com­pet­ing vision of America’s future; the emer­gence of a vast cor­po­rate appetite to devour Franklin’s small fry in a sin­gle swal­low – he intro­duces some­thing else entire­ly to the film. With skin stretched too tight over bone and mus­cle, pin­prick eyes and almost erot­ic sadism, Rakes queers the pitch, makes Law­less some­thing else, some­thing close to camp but also illic­it, threat­en­ing and odd. Equal parts vil­lain­ous and vaude­vil­lian, Rakes is a pro­found­ly strange con­coc­tion, but he gal­vanis­es the film when­ev­er he’s on screen.

Nowhere more so than his first encounter with Jack, where the pieces of Law­less fall into place and you’re remind­ed that few direc­tors can con­duct the casu­al con­ver­sa­tion of vio­lence with the clar­i­ty and elo­quence of Hill­coat. It may also be the point where Shia LaBeouf grad­u­ates into some­thing more than Steven Spielberg’s spoon-fed pro­tégé. Jack has all the crack­er­jack ener­gy of a pro­to-Clyde Bar­row, but LaBeouf plays him, too, as an exer­cise in humil­i­a­tion – blood­ied, tear- streaked, fright­ened. It’s the per­for­mance of an actor, rather than just a star.

And yet for all that, there’s some­thing miss­ing in the dynam­ic between the Bon­durants. Only Jack has expe­ri­enced any sort of arc by the time they reach a chaot­ic and unheroic show­down with Rakes, so you’re left feel­ing some­thing clos­er to curios­i­ty than sym­pa­thy at their fate, nev­er quite touched by its dra­mat­ic impetus.

But the real prob­lem isn’t about char­ac­ter at all. This is the first time Hill­coat has shot on dig­i­tal, and the result is close to dis­as­trous. Despite being filmed on loca­tion in the forests of Geor­gia, Law­less lacks any kind of visu­al tex­ture. The image is flat and over-lit, and though at first that offers a notable con­trast to the events on screen – nor­mal­is­ing and even domes­ti­cat­ing these extremes of action and tem­pera­ment – the lack of depth in the frame ulti­mate­ly becomes overwhelming.

Law­less isn’t ugly, but it doesn’t have the visu­al iden­ti­ty of, say, The Road, in which Javier Aguir­re­sarobe paint­ed in shades of light and dark. Here, DP Benoît Del­homme appears pow­er­less to con­jure with the ele­ments in front of him, and the film is con­se­quent­ly leached of life.

And so for all the grit and sweat and gun smoke up there on screen, it remains intan­gi­ble – at arm’s length. You can see it, but you can’t touch or taste it. You can’t lose your­self in it as you could dis­ap­pear into the shim­mer­ing haze of The Propo­si­tion. Law­less is a film of abun­dant poten­tial­i­ty, then – strange and edgy and flawed. It was nev­er going to work in Cannes. But it doesn’t quite work here, either.