Lawless (2012)

Almost always when Hollywood makes movies about the Prohibition Era, the action is set in the big cities.  This has always seemed strange in light of the fact that the bulk of the illicit liquor was made in the countryside and then smuggled into the big cities.  Also, when the liquor was made in big city stills, the raw materials came from rural areas.  In other words, if it were not for the collaboration of rural criminals with their urban counterparts, Prohibition would have been a success and might still be the law of the land even today.

Lawless is based on the real life story of the Bondurant brothers of Virginia.  Before Prohibition, the Bondurant family had been noted for its lawlessness and violence.  Prohibition would show that the Bondurants were able to hold their own against both big city racketeers and corrupt so-called law enforcers alike.

Unfortunately Lawless is not  as interesting as the historical events that inspired it.  This is a slow, boring flick with but little of redeeming value.  Its surprising just how dull this movie is given the excessive level of violence and killing just for the sake of killing that there is in this film.  There is also a gratuitous amount of what can only be called "torture porn" in Lawless.

There is little real plot or story to this flick.  Strangely, given all the violence there is also very little real suspense.  This despite the fact that there is one scene in which a man is tarred and feathered much like what happened to British tax collectors during the events preceding the American Revolution.  The combination  of gratuitous violence with characters who are all  unsympathetic, unlikable and  uninteresting makes for one boring movie.

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of Lawless is the actors who chose to be associated with this kind of garbage.  These are Gary Oldman and Guy Pearce who have held down prestigious roles in far better movies.  It is painfully clear that they agreed to be in this horrible flick only for the paycheck as shown by the fact that their performances were clearly phoned in.

Even worse is the fact that Shia LaBeouf is in this movie.  Shia LaBeouf plays the lead role as Jack Bondurant.  As in his previous movies, this guy is a mess.  He simply cannot do a convincing southern accent.  How he ever became such a prominent Hollywood figure is difficult to understand.

All in all, Lawless is a disappointment.  What could have been a historically sound action packed thriller is a flick that is loaded with all sorts of mindless sex and violence with little in the way of a coherent plot or quality acting.  Lawless is nothing more than a piece of trash and as such it ought to be avoided like the plague.