Lawless (2012)

Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Guy Pearce

Director: John Hillcoat

Genre: Crime, Drama, Western

Rating: C

I was really disappointed by this movie.  There was a lot about it that should have been good - that could have been good - but ended up sadly failing.  I don't think I've ever actually watched a Gary Oldman movie that I didn't like before, and perhaps that's where this could have gone right.  Movie makers of the world, take note: more Gary Oldman is always a good thing.

Based on the book The Wettest County in the World by Matt Bondurant (grandson and great-nephew of the Bondurant brothers featured in both book and film) Lawless takes us to Franklin County, Virginia during the Prohibition.  The film follows three brothers, Forrest (Hardy), Howard (Clarke), and Jack (LaBeouf) as they come up against the law, primarily in the form of Special Agent Charlie Rakes (Pearce).  The Bondurants are moonshine bootleggers who refuse to give a cut of their profits to the law, causing the law to begin to try to find ways to get rid of them - typical violent ways - pushing them towards a relationship with mobster Floyd Banner (Oldman).  Along the way both Forrest and Jack find love; Forrest in former Chicago dancer Maggie Beauford (Chastain) and Jack in the form of Bertha Minnix (Wasikowska), the daughter of a preacher (who I think might've been Amish or some similar religion).

To start, Lawless has an amazing cast.  With the exception of LaBeouf, who's movies tend to get mixed reviews, and Clarke, who I really don't know from anything else, there is an amazing cast here.  I mean, Jessica Chastain alone has won or been nominated in awards for almost every movie she's been in so far - and not awards like MTV Movie Awards, I mean BAFTAs and Oscars.  And that's without taking into consideration the fact that Gary Oldman is in this movie - Gary Oldman, who was described as "one of the best actors on the planet" by film critic Peter Travers.  When you see a cast like this, you should be able to expect greatness from a movie.  Something more than just the typical shoot 'em up type film.

In many ways, this is where Lawless fails.  It's trying to be more than your typical shoot 'em up type film but fails because it doesn't properly utilize its cast.  The best parts of the movie were the scenes with Chastain and Hardy or anything with Oldman, but Lawless wanted to focus more on LaBeouf and his adventures.  I haven't read the book, so I can't say what the source material does, but the story of the quiet and rough Forrest and his relationship with the far more sophisticated Maggie is a lot more interesting than anything Jack does.

What Lawless does with Jack is nothing short of predictable.  It's not really a shoot 'em up type film, but it's stereotyped of a lot of western and crime type movies.  Watching it you know what's going to happen long before it happens - at least when it comes to Jack.  There's a bit of unpredictability with Forrester, and a lot with Howard (who really, should be described as a drunk lunatic and thus by nature of his character is unpredictable), but the other stories... I know what's going to happen. It's obvious.  I usually try to avoid going into spoilers and talking about the endings (or at least not being graphic when I do so), but I feel like with Lawless I could detail the entire movie, right down to the end, and no one would be surprised about it - well, no one who watches movies at least.  Oh, and Oldman?  Completely under utilized.  He only had a handful of scenes, maybe two of which were actual speaking parts.  I loved his performance, but there definitely wasn't enough of it.  Once again: movie makers of the world please remember you can always use more Gary Oldman.

One good thing did potentially come out of my seeing this movie.  I now have a desire to read the book that it's based on.  If it's anything like your typical book-to-movie conversion - in which a great book becomes a rather shittastic movie - I think The Wettest County in the World could be a really interesting read.  It at least appears to have gotten better reviews on Goodreads than Lawless has anywhere.

The Help (2011)

Stars: Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Bryce Dallas Howard, Octavia Spencer, Jessica Chastain
Director: Tate Taylor
Genre: Drama
Rating: A-

The Help can easily be considered to be one of the best movies of 2011.  I say that not in a “this is one of those movies that is so awesome and deserves to win a ton of awards” kind of way, but in a “this is the type of movie that people need to see.”  This is one of those movies that deserved to win a ton of awards, and it did win its fair share, but it’s different from so many other movies that win awards – unlike other movies, which I won’t mention here, which appear to value the awards potential more than the entertainment potential, The Help is a movie that both tells an important story while also being entertaining.

Based on the bestselling novel of the same name (because just about everything out this year is based on either a bestselling novel or a comic), The Help is the story of Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan (Stone), Aibileen Clark (Davis), and Minny Jackson (Spencer) as they embark on writing a book about being a black maid in Jackson, Mississippi, during the 1960s.  The film’s protagonist, Skeeter, has just returned to her childhood home, after having completed a degree at the University of Mississippi.  Unlike her friends, who have all gotten married and started families, Skeeter is attempting to embark on a career of her own, and as such essentially stumbles upon the issue of civil rights and the idea to write a book using the first hand experiences of the maids of her friends.  Yes, this is going to go badly.  Skeeter comes across the idea after developing a bit of a relationship with Aibileen and discovering just how racist her friends, particularly Hilly Holbrook (Howard), are.  So she decides to write a book. About how her friends and neighbours are horrible people.  With the help of the employees of her friends and neighbours.  This movie is the story of the making of this book.  Oh, and also, there’s a side plot surrounding the new job that Spencer’s character has as a maid for Celia Foote (Chastain), a redneck who’s risen up in the world through her marriage, to the great disapproval of all of Skeeter’s so-called friends.

Where the book alternates in focus between the three women rather evenly as they struggle with the world around them (either as a white misfit or as black maids), the movie focuses far more heavily on Skeeter’s story.  As such the movie does lose some of its character; the book is very much a story of southern black women during the Civil Rights era, with an insight into the eyes of a white woman, as written by a white woman.  The film does utilize many stereotypes, in its depiction of both white and black women, and fails to address many of the issues that the book addresses.  That just comes with being a film adaptation of a book, though, you cannot address all of the issues and storylines in a relatively short period.  The story that is presented does stay true to the book, and in its limited means does, in my opinion, a good job of conveying the issues of the time, carefully navigating between a serious tone and, at times, a humourous one.  The three leads each do an amazing job, although the film really is stolen by Spencer.