Lawless / Rated R for bloody violence, torture, nudity, and sex. And some other bad stuff that I can’t talk about here.
This is a movie about Hillbillys. I love Hillbilly movies. And TV shows especially The Beverly Hillbillies although parts of the show look faked. My favorite all time Hillbilly movie was Hillbillys in a Haunted House (1967). It’s not widely known but when then picked the five films for Oscar consideration in 1967 HIAHH was number six. It should have won. But they had to give it to In the Heat of the Night. Get real people. While hardly anybody watches ITHOTN almost everyone I know has the Bluray DVD Extended Directors cut of Hillbillys in a Haunted House and watch it, like I do, every single day.
Lawless is about hillbillys during their most important era, prohibition, even ahead of the time of the Hatfield vs. McCoy’s shoot out. Lawless is based on a true story about the Bondurant Brothers. The three of them have a combined IQ of 64 and it shows. All they do is make, sell and drink moonshine alcohol. They also smoke a lot and take out their hillbilly rage on “revenooers”, their term for any law enforcement official that wants to stop them and other hillbilly bootleggers who are their competition. Their rage is shown on screen by shooting, stabbing, disemboweling, torturing, and beating up their enemies with fists, brass knuckles, shovels, guns, and any other inanimate object within reach. When their rage is momentarily satisfied they go back to drinking moonshine.
In Lawless a new lawman comes to town in the guise of actor Guy Pearce. He is greasy and evil. The Hillbilly Bondurant family is greasy but good at least from their point of view. Heading up the family is actor Tom Hardy fresh from his role as the bad guy in the latest Batman film. He and Guy both grunt a lot in response to questions or situations. A whole lot of grunting is going on. They sound like overworked judges at a chili cook off.
The Bondurants don’t want to pay more graft than they are already paying so GP gets mad and decides to burn down their still and torture any Bondurant he can get his greasy hands on. Shia LaBeouf (in all of the Transformer films and the most recent Indiana Jones flick) plays a slightly weaker brother who is out to romance a local church girl and make some money. He is in over his head at the violence stuff. It shows as he snivels a lot while his brother grunts in a manly manner.
Eventually the big shoot out we know is on the away arrives. The Hillybilly’s unite to beat the “revenooers” just like they did in Hillybillys in a Haunted House did to defeat the ghosts. Before entering the theater the staff were handing out a drawing of a torso to those of us about to go inside. I ask why and they said be sure to mark down on the drawing all the fatal wounds inflicted on Tom Hardy to win a free ticket. During the movie Tom has his throat cut ear to ear and receives over 75 bullet wounds to various parts of his anatomy. Not wanting to spoil anything I can’t say if he lives or dies but he sure is resilient. My final torso count came up short by 11 bullet holes. I missed 4 to the head and 7 to the lower abdomen. He is a true Hillybilly hero.
Rated 2.3 out of 4.0 reasons I am still waiting for Hillbillys in a Haunted House 2. You too?