Review: Lawless

Prohibition era stories have been done quite a bit by Hollywood.  Gangsters in suits with semi-automatics in hand, bullets and blood lining the streets of New York and Chicago, and square-jawed lawmen chasing down thugs from speak-easies to back alleys.  There has almost been a romantic quality that has underlined these movies, which most often are marked with severe brutality.  Filmmakers and moviegoers alike have held an affinity for these stories and have watched with different rooting interests as the system and its laws crash down on the men peddling their bootleg moonshine.  

Lawless is the latest entry into this sub genre although it takes the conventions of this kind of narrative and flips it on its head.  Like Jessica Chastain’s Maggie Beauford, the story escapes the mean streets of the inner city for the rural rolling hills of Virginia to a town run by the immortal Bondurant brothers.  When the state sends crooked lawmen to town to take control of the bootlegging, a back woods brouhaha begins to brew.

What makes this unique from its brethren is the matter of role reversal.  The system and its laws – mechanisms of the big city and its judicial system – have been handed to the Bondurant brothers by way of their legendary hold over this small town in Virginia.  Thus, the lawbreakers are cast as the lawmakers in this rural community and their reputations give them the authority to wield such power.  So when Guy Pearce’s Rakes comes to town with his special detective’s badge and threatens to disrupt the status quo, it is up to the Bondurants to enforce nature rules. 

Tom Hardy plays Forrest Bondurant – the leader of the pack and the muscle of the group.  While Shia LaBeouf's Jack Bondurant is the narrator of the film and is framed as the lead, Hardy’s character is the most pivotal to the film.  And as usual, he delivers.  Hardy is quickly establishing himself as a tremendous actor who makes good choices and his stunning record remains intact with this film.  He once again brings a strong physical presence to the role while hinting at a deeper sentiment and drives his brute force.

And as for the rest of his cast members, it is a bit of a mixed bag.  Jason Clarke as Howard Bondurant does a nice job playing the bridge between the three brothers.  On the one hand he brings a physical edge to the role while on the other he exudes the foolhardy demeanor one would expect from a middling sibling underling.  Joining him in the plus column is Guy Pearce, whose Charlie Rakes is an exemplary villain, dispensing acts of crooked punishment without an ounce of remorse.  Pearce does a good job of fashioning a creepy persona that is both vile and threatening.  Rounding out the superlatives are Dane DeHaan as Cricket Pate and Mia Wasikowska as Bertha Minnix.  The two do a fine job of portraying good-natured sympathetic characters that find themselves swimming in a pool with sharks.  In a movie with varying shades of gray, their performances establish the light end of the scale between good and bad.

As for Jessica Chastain and Gary Oldman, two of the major talents featured in this film, I was left some what unimpressed.  Chastain is a very good actress who has done very good work (as recognized by numerous awards nominations), but I found her performance to be vanilla and run of the mill.  As the most prominent woman in a male dominated cast, there was an opportunity for her to deliver a standout performance and to steal the show.  Unfortunately, nothing about her stood out and consequently she is relegated to “also-ran” status in this film.  As for Oldman, his presence is window dressing in the same manner as I described Liam Neeson’s in Battleship. As he does nothing whatsoever to legitimately advance the plot, I would guess that any number of actors could have easily filled his shoes and probably have done so with a bit more verve.

And last and most certainly least is Shia LaBeouf.  The man simply is not a third of the actor he thinks he is and the harder he tries to distance himself from the Transformers movies that made him so wealthy, the more his limitations as an actor get exposed.  He’s a one trick pony in the same way Taylor Kitsch is, but was just more fortunate to be attached to a Hasbro property that actually translates to a movie.  LaBeouf has one gear and that is of a petulant beta male with a dour disposition.  Even when cast in this role, his ability to channel this onscreen is questionable at best.  In a movie that features decent story telling and some good acting, he is the lone black mark.

LaBeouf however does not completely derail this movie.  There is enough here at work to keep you entertained.  I won't call this a must see movie, bu I would have no problem recommending it for the holiday weekend.  The character acting is just strong enough to engage viewers and get them to emotionally invest and the action sequences are robust enough to pick up the pace of the film when required.  It won’t get your adrenaline pumping the way Premium Rush did last weekend, but it will provide you an interesting story.

Standout Performance: Tom Hardy is quickly becoming one of most solid performers in Hollywood by combining legitimate character acting with a strong physical presence.  

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Review: The Dark Knight Rises (With Spoilers)

My review of The Dark Knight Rises in no way panders to that segment of comic book fans who have far too much invested in and an odd sense of entitlement over iconic superheroes such as Superman, Batman, Spiderman, et al.  Those fans are nearly impossible to please unless filmmakers deliver the exact film that these zealots have envisioned in their minds’ eyes.  Most often this does not happen and those individuals are left to rant and rave across message boards about how director X,Y, or Z epically failed to remain true to original cannon.  But no matter what BatFan5789 posts online or John Doe at the local comic shop tells you, the truth is that while the general structure of origins may exist, there truly is no one right version to any of these heroes.  Over the last seventy plus years since Batman’s first appearance, the character has been brought to life in many different incarnations with each storyteller lending their own respective creative nuances to the character.  So in considering the final chapter of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, it is not about whether he got things right in this movie, but really about whether you enjoyed the final chapter to his version of that story

The short answer for me is that I did.

I am not a Nolan apologist though I am a huge fan of most of his work.  I did not walk out of the The Dark Knight thinking it was on par with The Godfather Part II, but I thought it was a very entertaining movie.  So I did not go into The Dark Knight Rises expecting a movie that would redefine the genre and sweep the Academy Awards.  And while the movie is not perfect, it is an incredibly well shot and extremely entertaining story that finds Bruce Wayne a recluse 8 years after his last appearance as Batman.  Gotham is enjoying prosperity in his absence under the watchful eye of Commisioner Gordon and the false memory of Harvey Dent.  But a new threat is rising up that threatens the city’s newfound prosperity that requires the return of Batman.

So what doesn't work in this movie is that it falls victim to the “3rd Leg of a Trilogy” syndrome.  So often it seems that directors feel compelled to stuff as much as possible into the last leg of a three-part story even to the point that film’s plot seems metaphorically to be bursting at the seems (i.e. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, Spider-Man 3, et al).  In a lot of ways, I think this is born from the creative team’s desire to leave its loyal fan base completely satisfied.  What happens though is that the bloated plot begins to feel loose, the focus drifts, and the pacing gets thrown off.  The Dark Knight Rises suffers this a bit during its transition into the third act, but at the same time I cannot fully complain as I could not think of a set of details that I would absolutely have wanted removed from the film.  Still, it did make the film feel less lean and less nimble than its predecessor. 

As for what works, there are many things.  As you watch the film unfold, Nolan’s cinematic style is operating at its best and this is evident by the cuts between scenes, the attention to detail, and the devotion to character development.  Nolan has a distinct way of telling stories and as you watch the frames unfold, you know that you are watching a master at work.  The brilliance of this particular story is that while on the one hand you are watching the last chapter of Bruce Wayne’s Batman, at the same time you are unknowingly witnessing the origin story of John Blake.  And as much as this is a Chris Nolan/Christian Bale movie, it is almost equally a Chris Nolan/Joseph Gordon-Levitt film.

Speaking of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, he stands out from the cast by delivering the strongest performance of all.  As detective John Blake, Gordon-Levitt's presence in the movie is very much like the young and up and coming star on a basketball team of aging veterans, who injects youthful exuberance into the proceedings.  Gordon-Levitt has shown himself in the past to be a performer with great range, and in this film it seems as though he has elevated his game to a new level.  There is an interesting mix of anger, defiance, faith, and hope in his performance that makes it fitting that he is the last person you see on screen in the movie.

The second standout performance in the movie is delivered by Anne Hathaway.  It is no easy task to portray a character that has to be alluring and at the same time a legitimate physical threat, but she does so with flying colors while exuding the moral ambiguity that defines the character of Selina Kyle.  We have seen curious portrayals of Catwoman (Michelle Pfeifer) and we have seen what it looks like when the performance goes terribly awry (Halle Berry), and in understanding how difficult it could have been to make this character fit properly into Nolan’s Gotham City makes Hathaway’s perforamce all the more admirable.  She truly delivers some of the best scenes of her career.

The third standout performance belongs to Tom Hardy.  He has already established himself as a dynamic actor with his performances in Bronson, Warrior, and of course Inception and his work in this film is another notch in the belt.  It is no easy feat to deliver a compelling performance onscreen with much of your face concealed, but Hardy expertly leverages posture and other forms of non-verbal communication to bring the menacing character Bane to life.  His physical transformation into this bruiser is admirable.  Over the course of the film he allows the layers of his character to peel away culminating with a single touch of his mask from Miranda Tate.  It is a masterful performance.

It feels funny to have gone this far into the review without discussing the man beneath the cowl, but Christian Bale is solid as Bruce Wayne.  He slips into the character the way most of us slip into an old pair of sweat pants from college.  It is not an exceptional performance, but it is a very good one.  The same can be said for Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, and Morgan Freeman – the men who have played the heart and moral compass for Bale’s Batman.  The three very accomplished actors finish the trilogy as they started – expertly applying their craft in a way that elevates the movie from a very good movie to a great one.  In a lot of ways, they represent the viewers in the film, watching the exploits of Wayne/Batman and emoting in the ways that we the fans react.  As for Marion Cotillard, hers was the performance amongst the principle cast that left me a bit underwhelmed.  This is partly due to the fact that she has set the bar so high in some of her other performances (Inception, Midnight in Paris), but also because of the nature of her role and the various other mechanisms that exist in this film.  She is not bad.  She just is not great. 

I have already been asked a number of times how I feel this movie stacks up to The Avengers.  It is not a surprise question because of the proximity of their respective releases and their shared genre but it is not an apples to apples comparison.  The Avengers is an incredibly fun movie that celebrates all that is good about the comic book genre while also acting as a groundbreaking venture combining a number of franchises under one umbrella.  Nolan’s Batman trilogy has always been an attempt to ground a comic book character in the “real” world by telling a narrative that demands to be viewed (and not disregarded) as something more than a genre film.  However if I had to make a choice, I think I prefer The Dark Knight Rises ever-so-slightly over the The Avengers.

The best compliment I can pay a movie is to say that while leaving the theater, I found myself wishing it did not come to an end, and that's how I felt as Joseph Gordon-Levitt stood on that platform as the screen drew to black.  The third act of the movie is amazing and the last ten minutes of the film are the best ten minutes I have seen on the big screen all year.  It truly is a fitting end to one story and a fantastic beginning to another.  We know that there are no more sequels no matter how the movie may leave one asking for more.  But then the point of Nolan's movie has always been (As Bale's Wayne eloquently reminds us) that anyone can be the person behind the mask because the Batman is more than just a man – he is an ideal.  For Nolan, his story to tell was Bruce Wayne's participation in this enduring ideal and thus, the story will live on in whim and imagination...or at least until 2016 when WB reboots the franchise.  My guess here is that if you read this review, you have probably seen the movie, and if so my advice is to see it again.  I guarantee that you will see something you missed the first time and that it will make you love the movie a little bit more.

Standout Performance: To the director Christopher Nolan for having a vision and seeing it all the way through with each film surpassing its predecessor.

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