Taking a swig on Prohibition

Lawless
DIRECTED BY: John Hillcoat
STARRING: Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf, Jason Clarke, Guy Pearce
CERT: 16

MY late grandfather claimed we had at least one gangster in the family, an emigrant who fell in with the Mob in Chicago back in the Prohibition era. I’ve never found any evidence of it myself but then, if our cousin ever fell back out with the Mob, nobody else will have found any trace of him either. He won’t have been the only man last seen alive on the road to the swamp.
Matt Bondurant really did have gangsters in his family, or family who knew gangsters – a grandfather and his brothers who ran moonshine in the Virginia mountains. That’s the story he tells in his book, The Wettest County in the World, upon which Lawless is based. By his account, their acquaintance with the Mob was reluctant but it’s still a better story than mine. Which is no story at all.
A tale like that has the makings of an epic film, a hillbilly Godfather if you will and it’s obvious enough that’s what director John Hillcoat and screenwriter Nick Cave were aiming at. They don’t pull it off but they do make a decent enough fist of it.
The Bondurant boys run a restaurant and general store with its own gas station, a fine old family establishment that’s lacking only in customers. The real business is moonshine, quality stuff that brings in a decent penny and not a little trouble. But the Bondurants have a way of dealing with hassle. In Franklin County, Virginia, these boys are untouchable.
Eldest brother and walking force of nature Forrest (Hardy) is their natural leader and Howard (Clarke) is the hard-drinking, fearsome wild man. Young Jack (La Beouf) is an eager sort but a bit averse to the violence. He hasn’t proved himself, hasn’t quite ‘made his bones’. But he does have ambition, a nose for bigger things, pushing to hook the family up with big-time gangster Floyd Banner (Gary Oldman).
Things take a turn for the ugly when Special Deputy Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce) arrives from Chicago, all slick and dandy and looking for a piece of the action. The boys are having none of it, so Rakes and his henchmen try the psychotic approach to negotiation.
The result, of course, is war, the local family defending their patch against the crooked lawman. Which makes Lawless as much of a western as it is a Prohibition gangster flick. Though, unlike Tom Hardy and his boys here, I don’t recall Gary Cooper playing too many roles as a bloodthirsty anti-hero.
Like the Australian western The Proposition, on which Hillcoat, Cave and Pearce also collaborated, Lawless has quite the violent streak, with several scenes where the view is not for the squeamish. However, when the blood isn’t pouring, it’s a very fine-looking film. The production designers do an excellent job capturing the era and cinematographer Benoit Delhomme captures it all beautifully.
Nick Cave doubles up as composer along with Warren Ellis to provide a great score and Velvet Underground fans will recognize Lou Reed’s White Light, White Heat given a perfectly suitable 1920s makeover.
The script is where the film tends to stumble over bad, stilted dialogue and shaky  characters. Lawman Rakes is the worst offender, a caricature of a villain, though in fairness he might have been genuinely menacing if Guy Pearce had taken it down a few notches.
Then there are two ladies who turn up here, though not for any reason other than a nice bit of scenery. Jessica Chastain is a Chicago dame who arrives out of the blue to keep Forrest company and Mia Wasikowska is a flirty preacher’s daughter who catches Jack’s eye. They’re both fine but entirely unnecessary to proceedings.
In recent times, Shia LaBeouf has been trying the patience of even his initial admirers, playing the same role in a variety of poor films. He’s alright here, though as always, I could do without the narration. If someone has to tell the story, we might as well be watching the radio.
If there’s only one reason to watch Lawless, it’s Tom Hardy – last seen (just about) as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, behind that ridiculous mask. The British actor is in great form here, a colossal screen presence as the indestructible Forrest. His take on a Southern mountain accent is a tad bizarre but no more dodgy than anyone else’s. I have lived among these mountain folks and they don’t sound like that.
But they do still make fine drink.

Dredd
DIRECTED BY: Pete Travis
STARRING: Karl Urban, Olivia Thirlby, Lena Headey, Domhnall Gleeson
CERT: 18

SOME of you may not have been born when Sylvester Stallone put on the Judge Dredd helmet (and then took it off, the horror!) in 1995. For this, you should be eternally grateful.
Pete Travis and writer Alex Garland (28 Days Later, The Beach) try to restore the good judge’s honour with this excessively violent yarn and they succeed in as much as they couldn’t really have failed.
It’s the future and a trazillion people live in Mega City One, a vast metropolis whose name alone tells you how far human intelligence has advanced. We don’t see too much of the place though, because our supercop friend Dredd (Urban) and his trainee sidekick Cassandra (Thirlby) are trapped in a 200-story tower block.
The building is controlled by the psychotic Ma-Ma (Headey) and her drug cartel, whose latest product is Slo-Mo, a snazzy narcotic that makes the brain feel like it’s moving at one percent of its normal speed. In my house, we call that morning.
Dredd calls it criminal and as judge, jury and executioner, he’s going to put a stop to it quick. This involves a lot of pain and suffering and not a few visual delights.
If your stomach can handle that kind of delight.