Lawless

Released by: Anchor Bay Entertainment
Released on: November 27, 2012.
Director: John Hillcoat
Cast: Tom Hardy, Shia LeBeouf, Guy Pearce, Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain
Year: 2012
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The Movie:

The third collaboration between director John Hillcoat and writer Nick Cave (their first being Ghosts Of The Civil Dead and the second being the better known The Proposition), 2012's Lawless leaves the duo's homeland of Australia for prohibition era Virginia - Franklin County, to be exact. Here we meet a bootlegger named Forrest Bondurant (Tom Hardy), the strong silent type who isn't messed with - the local law knows better. As such, he and his brothers, Jack (Shia LaBeouf) and Howard (Jason Clarke), have earned a reputation among the locals as being invincible. With some help from Jack's crippled friend Cricket (Chronicle's Dane DeHaan), they do a good business.

All of this starts to head downhill for the guys when Special Deputy Charley Rakes (Guy Pearce) enters the scene and wants his cut. The Bondurants refuse and Rakes essentially decides to wage war against them. When Forrest is injured, just barely surviving having his throat sliced, he takes time to heal and hang out with his lady friend Maggie (Jessica Chastain). Jack takes their stock to a competing booze runner in the next town, a ruthless gangster named Floyd Banner (Gary Oldman), for some easy cash and winds up learning who attacked his brother. When he's not trying to woo the local preacher's daughter, Bertha Minnix (Mia Wasikowska), he's trying his damndest to take the family business to the next level while avoiding Rakes and his men - but Rakes is stubborn and will not relent no matter how high the stakes might get.

Tightly written with a great feel for character development by Cave and based on the book The Wettest County In The World by Matthew Bondurant (yes, he is a descendent), Lawless is another impressive collaboration between the writer and John Hillcoat. Cave's novel And The Ass Saw The Angel and much of his music shows off his unlikely knack for southern gothic Americana and a lot of that prior experience shines through in the situations and scenarios conjured up for this film. Hillcoat's past films have demonstrated excellent control over the pacing of his work and once again he shows his skills in that department as the film delivers more than a few remarkably tense scenes that, had they been played by a lesser director, may not have worked as successfully as they do here.

As far as the cast goes, let's get one thing out of the way here - Shia LeBeouf is actually pretty good in this picture. Based on his work in the Transformers movies and the latest Indiana Jones outing, his presence in the picture is understandably going to be a potential deal breaker for some but as far as credit where credit is due is concerned, the guy turns in very good work here. The rest of the cast are excellent across the board, there's really not a bad performance in the bunch. While Oldman's appearance is little more than a glorified cameo, his presence and particularly his first appearance in the movie is important if only for the impact it has on Jack later in the film. Hardy excels as the strong silent type here, an ominous and intense presence while Clarke does fine as the unhinged middle brother.

Guy Pearce, who also worked with Cave and Hillcoat on The Proposition, delivers an almost unrecognizable performance here. His character is flamboyant, strutting around in an expensive suit with a bowtie and jet black dyed hair correcting anyone foolish enough to leaver 'Special' off of his title. He steals pretty much every scene he appears in, which is no small feat considering the caliber of his fellow cast members' work.

Beautifully shot and making great use of some location photography the film is set to an interesting albeit very appropriate soundtrack courtesy of Cave and former Bad Seeds collaborator/Dirty Three front man Warren Ellis. It's moving and evocative although occasionally certain strains are repeated a bit more frequently than they could have been. That small complaint aside, this really is a well made film and one well worth seeking out.

Video/Audio/Extras:

Lawless looks excellent in AVC encoded 1080p high definition on a 50GB Blu-ray disc from Anchor Bay. Colors are nice and natural looking and black levels remain strong from start to finish. There were no noticeable problems with compression artifacts or edge enhancement noticed during playback nor where there any issues with noise reduction. Some very light shimmering shows up here and there but it's never anything serious. Detail is very strong both in close up shots and medium and long distance shots as well and texture remains impressive throughout the entire film. It's really tough to find much at fault here, picture quality is great.

Equally impressive is the English language DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track. Though an alternate English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround mix is included, the lossless track here is a true thing of beauty. Rear are used very nicely in the more action intensive scenes, the climactic shoot out being a great example, but also help to build atmosphere and ambience in the more quite, subdued moments of character development. Dialogue is clean, clear and crisp throughout and there aren't any problems at all with any hiss or distortion. Depth and range are both excellent and bass response is strong and tight, helping to deliver the gun shots with an appropriate amount of punch. Removable subtitles are provided in English SDH and Spanish.

The extras on the disc start off with a commentary track from director John Hillcoat and author Matt Bondurant, a descendent of the Bondurant clan depicted in the feature. These two do a good job together, with Hillcoat delivering enough technical and background information on the film to hold our attention in that regard and Bondurant discussing his family's history and how it plays into the film and the book he wrote that it was based on. The two discuss Cave's script as well as the contributions from the cast and crew, they note some bits and pieces about the locations and quite a bit more. There's very little dead air here, this track delivers a lot of very good information and is definitely worth a listen.

From there, we move on to Lawless: The True Story Of The Wettest County In The World, a twenty-two minute documentary on the making of the movie that includes input from Hillcoat and Bondurant but also from Nick Cave, actors Shia LeBeouf, Guy Pearce, Tom Hardy, Mia Wasikowska and Jessica Chastain, producers Danny Wolf, Lucy Fisher and Rachel Shane and last but not least, Jack Bondurant, Jr., the son of the actual Jack Bondurant. Although the featurette is a bit too dependent on clips from the movie there's some interesting information here, much of which comes from Cave who talks about his love of the source material and his take on it, as well as the actors who share some stories about what it was like playing their respective parts.

Franklin County, Virginia: Then & Now is a six minute location comparison piece that uses archival photographs and shots of the current day Franklin County to show us what has changed and what has not, while The Story of the Bondurant Family is an all too brief thirteen minute documentary on, as the title implies, the history of the family portrayed in the movie. Rounding out the extras are six deleted scenes totaling eight minutes and a short music video for Willie Nelson's Midnight Run. All of the extras on the Blu-ray disc are presented in high definition.

Menus and chapter stops are included as are trailers for a few other Anchor Bay properties, but no trailer for the feature itself. As this is a combo pack release, inside the keepcase alongside the Blu-ray disc is a standard DVD disc housing the same contents and a digital copy.

The Final Word:

Really well acted and beautifully shot, Lawless is worth all of the critical acclaim that it's received since it hit theaters earlier this year. It's a tense story well told by a very talented cast and crew and Anchor Bay have done right by the film by giving it a special edition release with excellent audio and video quality and a batch of extras that are not only interesting but which compliment the feature very nicely.

Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!