The Bondurant brothers run the largest bootlegging operation in the west Virginia mountains. Eldest brother Forrest (Tom Hardy) walks softly and slings brass knuckles in the pocket of his Mr Rogers cardigan. Middle brother Howard (Jason Clarke) is a liquor-soaked fuse waiting to be lit, while youngest brother Jack (Shia LaBeouf) is the family’s Achilles heel, neither as shrewd as Forrest nor as fierce as Howard.

Local law enforcement is complicit with their dealings, but they run afoul of big city Special Deputy Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce), a molten ego with slick hair, spotless leather gloves and a fiendish appetite for violence cloaked as justice. Since Forrest and Howard have survived World War I and the Spanish flu, respectively, Forrest claims Bondurants can’t be killed, and this fabled indestructible nature underpins the film’s plot. Every test to the limits of the Bondurants is another chance for the myth to reassert itself.

Gary Oldman is under-utilised and frankly a bit of a caricature as gangster Floyd Banner, but tommy-gun toting fun nonetheless.

The cast is superb on the whole. Between the steady poles of Hardy and Pearce’s performances, LaBeouf alternates between cocky assurance and anxious sweat, constantly falling short of the family legend. Mia Wasikowska is Bertha Minnix, object of Jack’s affection, daughter of a local Quaker minister, her clean-scrubbed beauty out of place amid the rust and mud of the moonshine business. Jessica Chastain appears deceptively fragile as Maggie Beauford, on the run from her past in Chicago, her slow-smoulder for Forrest one of the film’s satisfyingly quiet realisations. Gary Oldman is under-utilised and frankly a bit of a caricature as gangster Floyd Banner, but tommy-gun toting fun nonetheless. Relative newcomer Dane DeHaan (primarily known on the big screen for CHRONICLE) is the Bondurants’ earnest, luckless mechanic, Cricket.

…the bleak, barefoot poverty of LAWLESS may seem familiar, but [Hillcoat] pairs it here with an unexpected chaser of grim, blood-spattered humor…

Hillcoat’s last directorial feature was THE ROAD, so the bleak, barefoot poverty of LAWLESS may seem familiar, but he pairs it here with an unexpected chaser of grim, blood-spattered humor, a black-hearted will to live pitched against impossible odds. LAWLESS paints a small-time story in epic, bloody strokes against the surrealistically peaceful backdrop of Virginia mists and hills. Nick Cave’s screenplay matches the story’s scope – minimalist and restrained – accompanied by an expressive musical score. Visceral, whiskey-drenched menace lurks around every corner, and Hillcoat knows how to follow dread with a good punch. The build-up is consistent throughout, but after the film’s climax, the coda imposed by real-life events is tacked-on and unnecessary. It’s a hollow note on which to end an otherwise good story.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zl7S1LaPMU