Off to see Judge Dredd tomorrow and might see Lawless afterwards. I love days off in the week!
Ooo, tell us about Lawless. I quite fancy Gary Oldman the look of that.
I finally got round to seeing
Lawless last night. I enjoyed it more than
Killing them softly but that’s damning with faint praise.
It’s a 1930s set story of the Franklin County moonshine war, supposedly taken from real events. The protagonists are hillbilly moonshiners vs the law (themselves shown as venal and then increasingly corrupt, as embodied by Guy Pearce’s turn as a chilling Special Deputy).
I did enjoy the film although I would have liked more back story on most of the characters. The performances were good from all the cast, particularly Guy Pearce. Gary Oldman was great but he only has about three shortish scenes. Tom Hardy was good and convincingly brutal, although again I would like to have seen more of his character’s story explored.
The ending kind of jarred and seemed a bit too Waltons like after the preceding uncompromising two hours. I felt overall that the film was either an edit and rewrite too short or too far as the whole didn’t quite work, although some of the parts were great.
It’s the hillbilly aspect that provides for me what was the best part of the film – the soundtrack. The soundtrack is great and includes lots of Emmylou Harris and some Ralph Stanley, including an awesome cover of Lou Reed’s White Light/White Heat done in what Stanley would refer to as ‘Old time mountain style’ rather than the catch all ‘bluegrass’.
