FILM REVIEW OF ''LAWLESS" (2012)

“Lawless” (**** OUT OF ****) amounts to a first-rate, fiercely violent, but surprisingly entertaining crime thriller about Prohibition-era bootleggers in rural Virginia.  Not only does this exceptional 115-minute moonshine melodrama boast a gallery of memorable characters but also several unforgettable performances.   Although Shia LaBeouf takes top billing as the youngest of the three Bondurant brothers who brewed white lightning, Tom Hardy is the actor to watch in this rugged R-rated epic about turf wars in the woods.  Keep in mind, “Lawless” constitutes another of those movies “based on a true story.”  Interestingly, Australian director John Hillcoat of “The Proposition” and scenarist Nick Cave have adapted Matt Bondurant’s bestselling 2008 historical novel “The Wettest County in the World” and delivered a colorful, sometimes savage saga about the American free enterprise system.  What truth lies in the novel deserves scrutiny since Bondurant wrote about his own grandfather, Jack Bondurant, along with his two grand uncles and their high octane, Depression Era exploits as bootleggers who refused to bow to outside competition.   Most of “Lawless” chronicles the efforts of corrupt lawmen as they shake down rural moonshiners.  Anybody who doesn’t grovel pays a terrible price.  These sadistic dastards with badges tar and feather one unfortunate bootlegger and leave him for dead on his kin's front porch.  Despite the eruptions of sudden, noisy violence that will startle some and shock others, “Lawless” has more than its share of quiet, introspective moments to offset its abrupt Sergio Leone style violence. Indeed, Hillcoat and Cave slip in two love stories.  Cinematically, this atmospheric yarn resembles the Coen brothers' Depression-Era opus "O Brother, Where Art Thou," but it takes itself far more seriously.  Just as “O Brother” was inspired by Homer’s heroic poem "The Odyssey," the characters participating in the Great Franklin County Moonshine Conspiracy emerge as titans-of-industry themselves.

Forrest (Tom Hardy of “The Dark Knight Rises”), Howard (Jason Clarke of “Public Enemies”), and Jack (Shia LaBeouf of “I, Robot”) are the brothers Bondurant.  Howard survived World War I as the one man in his regiment who didn’t die.  During the pandemic 1918 Spanish Flu influenza, neither Howard nor Jack contracted the fatal illness. Miraculously, Forrest recovered from it but their parents perished.  Forrest believes his brothers and he are invincible, and the events that unfold in “Lawless” make that description of their longevity appropriate.  The first time we see the Bondurant boys, Jack’s older brothers are egging him on to shoot a pig for them for vittles.  Staring down the barrel of a .22 rifle, Jack cannot muster the nerve to squeeze the trigger.  One of his brothers intervenes and shoots it; the gunshot reverberates like an artillery blast.  Afterward, “Lawless” picks up in 1931. The Bondurants operate a money-making moonshine business and use their country store and filling station as a front.  Forrest calls the shots.  Howard serves as the muscle.  Jack sweeps the floors. Surprisingly, the Bondurants even sell shine to the local constabulary.  This is one of many surprises that occur throughout “Lawless” and make it a lively, off-beat genre exercise.

“Lawless” presents its larger-than-life events from the perspective of Jack.  The runt of the litter, Jack struggles to measure up to his two imposing brothers.  They are always ridiculing his best efforts.  Jack’s closest friend is a nerdy backwoods boy, Cricket Pate (Dane DeHaan of “Chronicle”), who was crippled during his infancy by Rickets.  Cricket conjures up clever means to manufacture moonshine.  When Jack visits Cricket, he finds Cricket brewing whiskey in a huge still beneath his backwoods mansion in the basement. Cricket pipes the brew up through a spigot at the sink and dispenses it in a Mason jar.  At one point, young Jack observes that the fires illuminating hundreds of illegal stills in the woods of Franklin County appear like a constellation of stars.  

 

Things change for both good and bad for the Bondurants and their kind.  A dancer from Chicago, Maggie Beauford (Jessica Chastain of “The Help”), hits Forrest up for a job as a waitress.  Eventually, Forrest and she grow fond of each another.  Meantime, Virginia Commonwealth District Attorney Mason Wardell (newcomer Tim Tolin) prefers to skim the profits from the bootleggers rather than shut them down.  He deputizes some unsavory Chicago troublemakers with few sentiments about the sanctity of human life.  The most prominent is sadistic Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce of “L.A. Confidential”) who dresses like a stockbroker. Rakes behaves like a Nazi, wears gloves, dyes his hair black, and arms himself with only the best weapons.  He assaults defenseless Jack with a shotgun and sends the battered twentysomething home with a message that should Forrest anticipate rougher treatment.  Two thugs arrive at Forrest’s bar and inflict maximum pain on him. Later, after other depredations, Rakes kills somebody close to the Bondurants.

Director John Hillcoat keeps things moving swiftly enough so the story never bogs down.  After the gunsmoke settles and the bodies are hauled off, Hillcoat wraps up the history neatly and gives us a glimpse of what the actual participants looked like in a 1917 black and white photograph.  Hillcoat stages several above-average shoot-outs, especially the bullet-blasting finale at a covered bridge.  Film editor Dylan Tichenor and Hillcoat have done a splendid job of editing the action scenes so the violence is more dramatic than gratuitous.  In other words, the violence may make you flinch, but you won’t be sickened by unnecessary gore.  The attention to period detail seems scrupulous, too.  Hillcoat substitutes Georgia for Virginia.  The rustic settings, the wooden barns, and the country stores as well as the clean-scrubbed urban cityscapes with period advertisements give “Lawless” an authentic feel.  Cinematographer Benoît Delhomme of “1408” captures those hundreds of fires blazing against the majestic backdrop of rural Virginia with his panoramic widescreen lens.  Memorable movies about moonshiners in the south are few and far between.  “Lawless” ranks as the best example about rural bootleggers since director Richard Quine's “The Moonshine War” (1970) with Alan Alda and Patrick McGoohan.

 

FILM REVIEW OF ''PUBLIC ENEMIES'' (2009)

“Miami Vice” creator Michael Mann recreates the Golden Age of Bank Robbery during the Great Depression in 1933 with his latest thriller “Public Enemies” (**** out of ****) and gangsters riddle the screen with gunfire galore. This depiction of the rise to prominence of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the demise of John Dillinger is based on bestseller author Bryan Burrough’s non-fiction book. “Pirates of the Caribbean” superstar Johnny Depp is cast against type as Dillinger, the sympathetic Robin Hood style desperado who acquired notoriety as ‘Public Enemy Number One.’ “Batman Begins” sensation Christian Bale impersonates the soft-spoken FBI Special Agent Melvin Purvis who brought Dillinger down. Although they drive vintage automobiles, blast away with vintage Thompson .45 caliber submachine guns, and wear vintage apparel, the characters in “Public Enemies” prove to be just as enthralling as any of Mann’s characters in his contemporary movies. Unfortunately, Mann doesn't always hit the bullseye for historical accuracy. Many of the events are reversed. For example, Pretty Boy Floyd died after John Dillinger and Melvin Purvis did not shoot him with a high-powered rifle. Similarly, Baby Face Nelson did not died before John Dillinger, but he perished long afterward. Moviegoers will cherish historical accuracy are in for several more surprises, but then "Public Enemie" is just a movie. Suffice to say, anybody who has read anything about Dillinger will not be surprised at anything that happens in this biographical epic.

“Public Enemies” opens with an interesting shoot-out at the Indiana State Penitentiary with a manacled John Dillinger getting escorted into the grim looking prison. This is the first of several surprises that occur for people who don’t know much about ‘Johnny’ Dillinger. Afterward, Dillinger and his gang arrive in East Chicago where they have bribed the local constabulary to ignore them. They also receive some favors from the local bookmakers that operate a coast-to-coast wire service link-up that relates to gambling on horse races. Mann shows Dillinger robbing banks and playing ‘spin the dial’ with bank presidents. Dillinger has men stationed out in front of the banks as inconspicuous sentinels with weapons concealed under their coats. Dillinger’s closest associate Red (Jason Clarke of “Death Race”) keeps the stopwatch running and knows when to wheel up to the front of the bank. Dillinger doesn’t take money from any of the common folk in the bank. He steals only from the banks and then he takes hostages for a ride with him to ensure that the local authorities don’t open fire on him when his gang cruises out of town.

All of this publicity aggravates FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (Bill Crudup of “Watchmen” in an awesome look-alike performance) and he assigns Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale of “Terminator: Salvation”) to manage the Chicago Office with orders to capture Dillinger. Purvis’ shooting of legendary bank robber Charles ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd (Channing Tatum of “Step Up”) in an orchard is what brought him to J. Edgar’s attention. Purvis doesn’t take long to realize that Hoover’s smart young men aren’t adequate for the task, and he requests help from the Dallas FBI Office. Several tough-looking, no-nonsense customers show up in Chicago who look like they were born with badges. Charles Winstead (Stephen Lang of “Tombstone”) and his cohorts stand out from the young, buttoned down types that surround Purvis. The FBI relies on telephone wiretaps and scientific analysis to monitor the Dillinger gang. When they cannot catch the gangsters squawking on the phone, they resort to more brutal methods, such as delaying medical treatment to a wounded bank robber to learn the whereabouts of the gangsters.

Dillinger picks up coat check girl Evelyn ‘Billie’ Frechette (Oscar winning Parisian actress Marion Cotillard of "La Vie en Rose") and cannot get her out of his system even when she walks off and leaves him after their initial encounter. Dillinger pledges himself to her, but she warns him that she doesn’t want to watch him die. Things take a turn for the couple when Dillinger is captured in Tucson, Arizona, as Frechette and he are about to take a bath together and the authorities fly him back to Indiana. Dillinger’s escape from Indiana is a part of criminal history. He wielded a fake wooden gun and bluffed his way out of jail. Later, he hooks up with Baby Face Nelson (Stephen Graham of “Gangs of New York”) to knock over a ripe bank in Sioux Falls with $800-thousand in its vault. Everything backfires on Dillinger and Nelson. They lug off barely $30-grand and then Purvis and his men surround the inn where the gang has taken refuge and a major firefight erupts with several gangsters dying in a blaze of gunfire.

Johnny Depp bears a closer resemblance to John Dillinger than Christian Bale does to Melvin Purvis. Bale is actually taller than Purvis. Dillinger was idolized by many during the Depression and he strove to stay in the limelight so that the common people would harbor him when he was on the lam. According to Mann’s version of history, Dillinger fell not only because of the persistence of Melvin Purvis and the FBI, but also because Dillinger brought too much heat onto his fellow criminals in the coast-to-coast racing rackets after Congress passed legislation against interstate crime. The cast is first-rate throughout “Public Enemies.” Mind you, “Public Enemies” doesn’t lionize Dillinger to the degree that director Arthur Penn did for Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker in “Bonnie & Clyde,” but we get glimpses of Dillinger’s celebrity status when the Feds fly him back to Indiana.

“Public Enemies” ranks as the best gangster picture since Brian de Palma’s “The Untouchables.” The real curiosity is the R-rating that “Public Enemies” drew when it doesn’t contain half as much violence and gore as the most recent “Punisher” actioneer. The shoot-outs are noisy but relatively bloodless, though there is an interrogation scene where a detective roughs up a woman. Incidentally, many of the scenes were lensed on the actual locations where this story transpired.