Obey the Lawless

In theaters Friday: Gangster Squad, Struck by Lightning, Zero Dark Thirty
New on Blu-ray: Frankenweenie, Dredd

The problem with bootlegging isn’t the law, it’s that everyone wants a cut. And in the Depression-dusted hills of Franklin County, Virginia, every cut runs deep. Don’t let the direct-to-DVD title fool you, John Hillcoat’s Nick Cave-written period shoot ’em up Lawless is an intriguing paradox of historical fact and the type of heady myth-spinning that could make most syrupy fan fiction feel, excuse the pun, but dry by comparison.

Based on the novel The Wettest County, written by Matt Bondurant who took heavy inspiration for his book from his grandfather’s life as a rough-and-tumble moonshiner, Lawless stars Shia LaBeouf and Tom Hardy as polar opposite brothers in the booze business. Hardy is the family rock, a fear-inducing man who survived a plague and bullet wounds and anything else life has thrown his way. The long-standing rumor is he simply can’t die, a notion that makes him scary enough to be able can wear a cardigan 24/7 and not elicit a single crack. On the contrary, LaBeouf’s steel is as slight as his build, and where Hardy is unemotional to his burly core, LaBeouf is all nervy passion, flash and lust for instant infamy.

A harsh narrative told at an almost lyrical pace, the film picks up when the Bondurant family’s lucrative moonshine empire is threatened by a city slick (and creepily germophobic) new lawman who wants either a percentage of the profits or the heads of the profitable. Hardy and LaBeouf seek to survive in their own divergent ways putting themselves and their loved ones at risk.

Played with aristocratic aggression by Guy Pearce, Charlie Rakes is one of cinema’s most memorable and chilling villains of 2012, nearly matching Hardy himself as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. Here, Hardy’s angular Southern accent and soft-spoken, rusted chain drawl is miles from sounding like his Batman foe, proving again that the English thespian is a character chameleon who commands his body and voice in ways most actors simply cannot. As the family’s recently hired restaurant-runner, Jessica Chastain turns in another devastating and quietly stalwart performance, proving that 2011—in which she starred in The Help, Tree of Life and Coriolanis—was no fluke. Also, the great Gary Oldman pops up as an East Coast gangster in a few too-fleeting scenes. After playing nice for so many years, it is refreshing to see Oldman on the dark side again, even if he plays this mafia boss with a charismatic wink.

While the narrative hits every expected genre beat, and lags in spots, it is the front-to-back solid performances—the bench runs long with great roles for Mia Wasikowska, Noah Taylor and Dane DeHaan as well—the lush, brown-hewed cinematography and a curve ball of a soundtrack (including Cave, Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Mark Lanegan of Queens of the Stone Age and two ludicrously anachronistic but brilliant cover versions of Velvet Underground’s “White Light/White Heat”) that combine to make Lawless worthy of a big swig, even if it stings some on the way down.

Lawless is available now on Blu-ray. Watch the trailer below: