<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" Even if you didn&amp;#039;t know that John Hillcoat&amp;#039;s 1930s-set bootlegging thriller marks his first reunion with screenwriter Nick Cave since their 2005 outing The Proposition, you wouldn&amp;#039;t be hard-pushed to identify the films&amp;#039; shared lineage. Both are hardscrabble, lyrically brutal Westerns centring on three outlaw brothers, with Tom Hardy here taking the role of the dominant middle child as played by Guy Pearce in The Proposition, and Shia LaBeouf replacing Richard Wilson as the wet-behind-the-ears &amp;quot;runt of the litter&amp;quot;.  These brothers (the third of whom is played by an instantly forgettable and largely forgotten Jason Clarke) are liquor bootleggers, who find their roaring trade threatened by the arrival of effete, urbanely sadistic agent Charlie Rakes (Pearce, returning for his third collaboration with Hillcoat). Rakes is acting on the orders of a corrupt DA, who wants a cut of the brothers&amp;#039; profits in exchange for turning a blind eye to their antics. The response from Hardy&amp;#039;s Forrest \u00E2\u20AC\u201C &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m a Bondurant\u00E2\u20AC\u00A6 we don&amp;#039;t bow down to nobody&amp;quot; \u00E2\u20AC\u201C establishes these brothers&amp;#039; larger-than-life mythology, which Hillcoat and Cave strive to simultaneously build up and tear down. Lawless is adapted from a novelised historical account of the brothers&amp;#039; reign by Matt Bondurant (grandson of LaBeouf&amp;#039;s character Jack), and it&amp;#039;s no bad thing to avoid idolizing your story&amp;#039;s heroes, but Cave&amp;#039;s refusal to buy into the Bondurants&amp;#039; myth seems at times to prevent him from developing them as flesh-and-blood characters.  It doesn&amp;#039;t help that LaBeouf is simply a gaping charisma vacuum, while the wildly charismatic Hardy \u00E2\u20AC\u201C ironically following his divisive vocal choices in The Dark Knight Rises \u00E2\u20AC\u201C chooses to communicate mostly through grunts and facial flexing.  The character seems to share some DNA with Heath Ledger&amp;#039;s laconic Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain, but Forrest&amp;#039;s internal struggle is less clearly defined and so the inarticulacy becomes more of a hindrance, although it also makes for an endearingly awkward courtship dance with ex-city girl Maggie (Jessica Chastain).  It&amp;#039;s the supporting turns that shine brightest, and none more so than Chastain and Pearce. Maggie is nothing like the shrinking damsel you might expect from a film so firmly steeped in the Western tradition. Despite the physical and psychological violence she suffers, Chastain emanates a quiet strength and resilience that allows Maggie to emerge, despite her physical fragility in comparison to Hardy, as the toughest character on screen.  In a role drastically and rewardingly altered from Bondurant&amp;#039;s novel, Pearce&amp;#039;s fey, slippery villain rivals No Country For Old Men&amp;#039;s Anton Chigurh in the &amp;#039;mad haircut&amp;#039; stakes, while his few scenes with Chastain carry a compelling, creepy frisson that could carry a film all on its own.  There&amp;#039;s an opportunity here for a more poignant study of a family pulling together under siege, but there&amp;#039;s never much sense of love or shared history between the three brothers, while Jack&amp;#039;s arc from zero to hero (or pacifist to gunslinger) is undermined by LaBeouf&amp;#039;s less-than-engaging turn. Lawless has robust performances, canny scripting, an evocative soundtrack and moments of visceral, poetic beauty, but it&amp;#039;s frequently too wrapped up in the idea of storytelling to tell a compelling one of its own.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/review/a403784/lawless-review-tom-hardy-leads-a-robust-cast-in-bracing-western/>