Lawless (John Hillcoat)

[Watashi]

http://themovieblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/lawless-poster-hitfix.jpg

IMDb (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1212450/)

[Watashi]

I know a few people here have seen this already. A shame about the mixed reviews. Looks like there was a great movie in there.

[TGM]

I wasn't expecting much, but I actually ended up liking this quite a bit. The acting was pretty great all around. Guy Pearce was fucking menacing as hell, and Shia Labeouf really impressed the hell out of me with his acting chops. Definitely his best role to date.

Honestly, my only real complaint would be the overly sappy ending, which felt misplaced in an otherwise brutal as hell movie. I felt a better ending would be to maybe just return to the hospital and find out that Forrest made it out alive, and maybe they all just exchange a knowing glance or something, showing that they really are as invincible as everyone claims. The crap with the holiday family festivities and everyone's kids and all of that just really didn't fit in at all with the rest of the movie, I thought.

That, and not enough Gary Oldman. Anytime he was on screen, though, he fucking killed it!

[chrisnu]

About a year ago, I was in the first audience to see a working cut of this. The color timing wasn't finished, there was stock footage in place of scenery shots, and it had temp music. I didn't particularly care for it then, outside of Tom Hardy's performance, Guy Pearce chewing the scenery as much as possible, and Gary Oldman. Not sure if I want to see the finished product.

I thought Jessica Chastain was wasted in this role. However, she does show everything, so if that's motivation to see it...

[Watashi]

This was a very silly movie, but totally watchable. I really found Guy Pierce's Looney Tunes performance very entertaining.

The film did feel gutted in the editing room though.

[Sxottlan]

This was a disappointment. Not sure why since I wasn't crazy about The Proposition or The Road. It's fairly boring. Guy Pearce however is entertaining in a cartoonish way. I was surprised to see a film in this day and age with a montage set to music of criminals doing their jobs. I think Dick Tracy was the last time I saw that.

The coda felt completely out of the blue and disconnected with the rest of the tone of the film. Seems the script is based on a book by a descendent of the bootleggers in the film. So I'm thinking he was looking through rose-colored glasses at his ancestors by end.

Tom Hardy and his character deserved a better movie.

[EyesWideOpen]

I loved this. Fantastic performances all around but especially by Wasikowska, Hardy & Labeouf.

[Boner M]

Wasikowska had a nothing role and did nothing with it.

[EyesWideOpen]

Wasikowska had a nothing role and did nothing with it.

Disagree. The scene with her in the car and Labeouf "courting her" was one of the best scenes I've seen all year.

[Rowland]

Hardy in TDKR > Hardy in this.

Plenty watchable, but lacking in conviction, urgency, and palpable texture. More fun, but less artful, than The Road; both overly distilled weaksauce compared to The Proposition.

[Rowland]

Disagree. The scene with her in the car and Labeouf "courting her" was one of the best scenes I've seen all year.I'd hardly qualify it as one of the best scenes of the year, but of the movie, possibly. The charming interplay between her and LaBeouf was one of the film's most pleasant, albeit minor, surprises.

[Scar]

I give it yay because of Hardy and Pearce.

[Irish]

This was balls out terrible.

It felt like they shot a bunch of footage and then just edited it together haphazardly, knowing they didn't have a movie but trying like hell to salvage what they could.

There's no rhyme or reason to the continuity, and scenes follow one after the other almost arbitrarily. Characters walk out of one scene and into another wearing different clothes and suddenly appearing at different times of day. Violence that happens in one moment has almost no effect on anything that happens subsequently.

The movie doesn't have a clear protagonist either, with Hardy & The Beef's characters following similar arcs and resolutions. It's absurdly redundant.

The worst is Guy Pierce, though. He seems to be drawing on newsreel footage of Chicago gangsters crossed with arch Nazis to inform his performance. Like, seriously, what the fuck was he doing and why did the director let him do that!?

I would have bought into the whole "immortal" legend thing a bit more if that didn't mean every man in this picture had Wolverine's level of regeneration. People take serious, crippling beatings and not only are they walking around the next day, there's barely a mark on them.

What a massive waste of talent all around.

(I did laugh out loud, though, at the end, when the original author's name appeared in the credits -- Bondurant. So apparently this guy published a book about his own family's tall tales & somebody made it into a movie. Or tried to, at least).

[transmogrifier]

It was fine. Relatively pointless, really, with little in the way of character or thematic depth (and I found Hardy's stereotypical hard arse a cliched bore) but the narrative is just good enough to hold interest, except for the rather dumb climax. It makes good use of The Beef's inherent dweebishness.

[Skitch]

My god what a bore. Could barely understand anyone half the time. Ending was awful. Public Enemies via The Lovely Bones.

[Dukefrukem]

Boring. And what a sappy ending.

[Grouchy]

Pleasantly surprised by this. It's nothing that hasn't been seen before, but a hard-boiled gangster saga done well is always welcome. I thought Guy Pearce's villain was brilliant - I'd never seen him do that kind of gleeful scenery chewing.

I really don't get the mixed reviews. This film is a lot more worthy than most of what's nominated for Best Picture. I do agree that the ending coda was a bit too sentimental.

[Irish]

I really don't get the mixed reviews. This film is a lot more worthy than most of what's nominated for Best Picture. I do agree that the ending coda was a bit too sentimental.

What specific aspects of it did you find worthy?

I'm not a technical guy when it comes to film. I don't notice lens changes or whatever like some people here do. But this movie seemed slapdash. The editing and construction here were both terrible; when a character leaves one scene wearing one set of clothes and enters another wearing a different set, at the same time of day ... something is deeply wrong.

[Watashi]

What specific aspects of it did you find worthy?

Full-frontal Jessica Chastain nudity for one.

[Grouchy]

What specific aspects of it did you find worthy?

I'm not a technical guy when it comes to film. I don't notice lens changes or whatever like some people here do. But this movie seemed slapdash. The editing and construction here were both terrible; when a character leaves one scene wearing one set of clothes and enters another wearing a different set, at the same time of day ... something is deeply wrong.
While I appreciate the technical aspects of film, they don't decide whether I like a movie or not. I like movies that I find interesting and dislike ones which I don't. Case in point, Argo and Flight are two films I saw recently that were very well done. I couldn't care less about them.

I'll give you something - there were some blatant continuity errors in this. The most notable was when LaBeef lost a shoe and then came running home to receive a beating with both shoes on. I don't understand how none pointed that out.

But above all that, I thought it was a compelling film. I believed in the family ties of the characters and cared for them and their struggle for survival. Also, I found the violent scenes were excellent. I was entertained all the way. I don't think it's a masterpiece, but I put it next to Silver Linings Playbook or Argo and I like this one a hell of a lot more.

[Grouchy]

I do wish this had rettained its original title of The Wettest County, since it actually has something to do with the story.

[plain]

Such a mess, so much disinterest in the actual history it's steeped in. Never really boring, but so routinely uneven. Chastain's boobs, though.

[Qrazy]

This film ends with quite possibly the most ill conceived shoot out of all time. My god. So bad.

Also can Shia's career end yet? He sucks guys. The scene with him and the girl is not good. It's bad. Because he's bad. Bad at acting. Please let it stop.

[Dukefrukem]

I can only imagine what Nymphomaniac is going to be like...

[Qrazy]

I can only imagine what Nymphomaniac is going to be like...

Awkward O-faces.

[kuehnepips]

I love this movie.

[Dukefrukem]

I love this movie.

Why exactly?

[Skitch]

Tom Hardy.

[kuehnepips]

Tom Hardy.


insert thumbs-up-mad-max here

[transmogrifier]

Tom Hardy is close to becoming the most overrated actor alive.

[Skitch]

insert thumbs-up-mad-max here

I remember lol.

[kuehnepips]

Tom Hardy is close to becoming the most overrated actor alive.

Nonsense.

*note to myself: no bottles for trans*