Head fer the Hills,
Pa. The Revinooers Is A-Comin’!
Review by Ken Burke
A true story of Depression-era moonshiners who
don’t see kickback to the feds as a business plan, this is a violent but impressive tale of backwoods capitalism.
While I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the book that
inspired John Hillcoat’s Lawless
(Matt Bondurant’s 2008 historical novel about his grandfather and great-uncles,
The Wettest County in the World) nor
the fidelity of the cinematic adaptation to its literary source, the basic
facts are true: during the grim 1930s
years of the Great Depression, when people needed a drink more than ever to
ease their financial sorrows, the production and sale of alcohol was forbidden
by the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, so human need and
entrepreneurial spirit linked up and illegal distilleries appeared wherever
they could operate undetected, apparently nowhere more actively than in
Franklin County, Virginia, where the Bondurant brothers for a time ran the most
successful operation of all, backed by the Chicago mob even while harassed by
the less-than-successful local law. How
this truth evolves into creative nonfiction or even further into full-blown
docudrama is for the historians among you to explore, but whatever the full
facts may be in this case the story on screen is quite compelling, if for no
other reason than the seeming invincibility of elder sibling Forrest (Tom
Hardy, famed as the mask-wearing maniacal villain Bane in this summer’s The Dark Knight Rises [Christopher
Nolan]—within the photo, he’s on your left in the car), who seems to have absorbed
more bullets than Vito Corleone in the original Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972) and lived to tell about it,
as did his brothers, the more-brawn-than-brains Howard (Jason Clarke—standing
behind the car), and the youngest-but-emerging-power-in-the-family Jack (Shia
LaBeof)—although it takes some effort to find out which brother was Matt’s
grandfather because he seemingly resists filling in that detail, including in
an extended review at http://vimeo.com/27753063
where he finally acknowledges at the very end that it’s Jack. Maybe it’s because for most of the film Forrest
is the commanding, powerful one (just as “Madge is the pretty one!” as voiced
by disgusted younger sister Millie in Joshua Logan’s 1955 Picnic), a guy as determined as Bane to accomplish what he believes
in, although here it’s not the destruction of Batman and Gotham City but the
preservation of the Bondurant family business without paying protection money,
not to upscale mobsters (they’re actually his best customers) but to the
law-enforcement leader, Charlie Rakes (a vicious Guy Pearce), sent in from the
big city to clean out the moonshiners but who instead wants to clean up
personally by forcing them to share their profits with him or else he'll do more than just arrest them.
In addition to the Godfather
references noted above (which could be extended with note of Jack’s rise in
command of the family business during a period of recuperation for Forrest
after he gets his throat slit by bullies working for Rakes), there’s a clear Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967)
vibe going here as well with the locals supporting the rugged-capitalist
success of the Bondurants’ impressive array of big-volume stills and a sense of
utter contempt by just about everyone (including the local law up in the
county’s mountain community) toward swaggering, ruthless Special Agent Rakes
who gives Jack a bloody beating early in the film (shades of Michael Corleone
being beaten up—but not nearly so badly—by corrupt cop Capt. McClusky In that
mafia classic I keep mentioning) as he attempts, unsuccessfully, to bring the
Bondurant operation under his control.
Rakes finally finds a way to break the Bondurants’ secrecy about their
mega-still location hidden deep in the woods when he trails love-struck Jack
heading for a romp in the trees with his emerging girlfriend Bertha Minnix (an
effectively subdued but still flirtatious Mia Wasikowska). Jack and one-man army Howard get the drop on
Rakes but when his reinforcements arrive they have to abandon both their
lucrative livelihood and their co-conspirator, Cricket Pate (Dane DeHann), to
the ruthless retaliation of Rakes, who leaves the stills in a shambles (after
the cops have posed with the evidence before the destruction, just as Jack and
Cricket posed for their own photos earlier when they were riding high with
profits—again echoes of the self-promotion of the Barrow gang with mortified,
captured Texas Ranger Frank Hamer in another famous photo—and just to run the
table with references to these previous crime classics, don’t forget that Buck
Barrow’s wife, Blanche, was also the daughter of a preacher, although Bertha
never did anything illegal [immoral, in her father’s opinion, is another story
if she and Jack hadn’t been so rudely interrupted]) and Cricket dead of a
broken neck. Rakes finally comes to his
own rude end when a wounded piston-packing Jack and a vicious knife-wielding Howard
finally put him down after he’s abandoned by his own troops in a rejection of
police authority deteriorating into a police state.
Essentially, that’s all there is from a narrative
standpoint with Lawless, its just the
hard-scrabble moonshiners outlasting the law (few of whom really are that
interested in putting the Bondurants or any of their neighbors in jail for
producing and providing the illegal substance de jour) and providing
inspiration to their downtrodden community that survival, even success, could
still be possible even in the hardest times, as well as inspiration that
determination and self-respect—embodied in Forrest, emerging (when his ego
doesn’t get the best of him) in Jack—will carry you for quite a distance even
against rough odds and weave a web of support in your environment that can help
bring neighbors together when callous adversity tries to impose itself (of
course, in our current Great Recessionary times a film like this also conjures
up the simple pleasure of “sticking it to the Man,” as Bonnie and Clyde did in the equally-tumultuous late ‘60s where the
success of Great Depression criminals was also used as a metaphor for
celebrating those who strike back at abusive authority, whether it’s used by
politicians, police, or the financial Establishment who supports them both—you
know, if I keep up in this vein much longer I’m going to end up an honorary
member of the Black Panthers even though I’m white and affluent enough to be
mistaken for someone who found anything remotely funny or useful about Clint
Eastwood’s anti-Obama performance at the recent GOP convention). So, while her character, Maggie Beauford,
isn’t a critical piece of the plot—except for providing a love interest for
life-hardened Forrest and driving him to the hospital when he was unconscious
after the throat-slitting, rather than his own self-assumed, self-generated
myth that he walked there himself in a superhuman show of invincibility—Jessica
Chastain once again offers a marvelous presence in her role of a disillusioned
city gal who wanders out to the Bondurants’ gas
station/café/marginally-clandestine bar looking for a job and a new lease on
life. What she finds the night of the
attack on Forrest is just as gruesome for her (those same thugs weren’t
finished making mayhem just because her protector was incapacitated), but the
restraint she shows later in insisting that nothing happened (which we’re not
about to believe, even though Hillcoat spares us anything explicit, unlike what
he shows of the men assaulting each other) is truly the mark of a great
actress, whose notable roles are piling up like so much gold in her vault of
accomplishments. I’ll also note that
while he doesn’t get much screen time Gary Oldman as major mobster Floyd Banner
is also a delight to watch, although he’s smart enough to stay out of Agent
Rakes’ way so as not risk tilting the unsteady balance between gangsters and
feds in the early ‘30s (despite our secret hope that he might lend some needed
firepower to the Bondurants’ cause, at least until they show at the climax that
they have all they need; in a pinch, Forrest could probably have pulled some
bullets out of his own body to shoot back with, as his assumed invulnerability
continued to serve him well until he finally died of pneumonia at the
anti-climax in the 1940s after all of the brothers had married their lady
loves—including Bertha who finally stood up to her father just as Jack stood up
to Rakes).
Lawless is an
intense experience that offers no qualms about siding with the criminals,
except to raise the question of whether their circumstances don’t easily
justify their crimes, especially in a situation where law enforcement seems
driven more by personal ego and greed than by any sense of respect for the
statutes to be upheld. Forrest Bondurant
may seem like a bit of an ego-driven fictional creation as well, but given that
the real guy seemingly survived World War I and the Spanish Flu, in addition to
being raised in the traditions of Southern pride (where backwoods honor may be
the most intense motivation of all), the film evolves into a very interesting
tale of survival as a response to potential destitution and an examination of
what truly motivates dignity and honor.
If you don’t care for spurting blood you may have to ask for some of
your ticket money back for the time you spent with your eyes closed, but
whatever you end up paying for Lawless
it would likely be money well spent unless you feel that the basic concept is
just too easily established and takes longer than necessary to work itself out,
a fault you could also apply to a lot of what inhabits movie theatres these
days, including the charming but a bit over-stretched Robot and Frank.
While I’m
not offering a full review of Jake Schreier’s mostly comic meditation on aging,
Robot and Frank, starring Frank
Langella in a marvelous depiction of a character also named Frank—an elderly,
fading-into-dementia cat burglar—and Peter Sarsgaard as the voice of the robot
inserted into Frank’s life by his distant-but-somewhat-caring son, Hunter
(James Marsden), I will recommend it for the consistent strength of Langella’s
performance; the intelligent decision to imply rather than detail how Frank’s
past criminal activities led to divorce, estrangement from Hunter, and a fierce
sense of over-protectiveness from daughter Madison (Liv Tyler); and the warm
addition of Susan Sarandon, providing additional comfort as Jennifer, a local
librarian in their upstate rural NY location, a place in this near-future
setting where service robots are an accepted aspect of society (not by Frank,
until he realizes that his mechanical “friend” can help him get back into well-planned
heists) and books are being stored away so that Jennifer’s library can
transform into a Starbucks-like data-storage center. I’d give this a 3 ½ star rating, about the
same as Metacritic’s 67 and Movie Intelligence’s 72, although the folks at Rotten
Tomatoes liked it even more with a high-for-them 88. There’s a touching plot twist at the end,
some well-written explorations about the sad, subtle ravages of increasing
memory loss, and some interesting situations about the inevitable interactions
between humans and intelligent machines soon to come in our society, although
the whole experience—while a pleasure to watch—feels a bit strung out past what
is already a limited 89 min. running time, as if this were taken from a sweet
sci-fi short story that needed a bit of padding to qualify for feature
length. Even if you found the aging
sexual exploits in Hope Springs (see my
review in the 8/15/12 posting) not in your demographic wheelhouse, I think that
most audiences could appreciate the sincerity of dwindling quality time
remaining as presented by Langella in Robot
and Frank while the amusing bits with the robot provide some unexpected
insights on “interpersonal” relationships.
Here’s a case, as with Lawless,
where crime does pay pretty well, if more so in emotional than in monetary gain
(if you’d like to learn more about this film, you might start at http://robotandfrank-film.com/).
If you want
know more about Lawless here are some
suggested links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u25yB1nksJ4
(short background commentary by director John Hillcoat and a couple of the
actors)
We encourage you to look over our home page (ABOUT THE BLOG), found as
the first one in our December 2011 postings, to get more information on what
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