Lawless (2012)

An unmarked Blu-RY arrived for me in the mail today and I was quite surprised when I put it in my player and was greeted by the menu for Lawless.

Having missed it in the cinema I was really looking forward to watching it but like a number of films this year it disappointed. The film is the very definition of averag. Performances were good though Chastain and Oldman were completely wasted in their small insignificant roles and Pearce'd while enjoyable to watch was very poorly written. I half expected him to show up with a thin moustache and begin twirling it while laughing maniacally, really was like something out of a Looney Toons episode.

Cave's script was very disappointing, the story was basic and as the end credits roll you realise that nothing really happened over the past two hours. The boys rise to the top should have been pivotal to the overall telling of the story but it was told on a brief montage that added absolutely nothing of any real note. The relationship between the brothers was similarly underdeveloped and there was an almost disjointed feel to scenes as multiple scenes has been cut in order to get the run time under 2 hours. The biggest problem is the ending. It lacks any sense of originality it wit and the less said about the terrible final scene the better.

Really wasn't a fan of the cinematography, yes it looked great at times and done of the establishing shots were excellent the whole thing just looked to digital. It was far too clean looking and the green scene shots really stood out.

Lawless isn't a terrible film its just a bit dull and uninspired. There's nothing there we haven't seen a dozen times before and there's an overall feeling of "meh" to the while thing. There's a great story there but sadly Lawless isnt the film to tell it.

Rabidlamb

I had high hopes for this but it really disappointed.
Most of the gripes have been aired already but my biggest one was understanding the dialogue with that thick southern drawl.
Jeff Bridges laid it on thick in True Grit but at least you could make out what he was saying.
2.5/5 & the .5 was for Hardy's performance.

snausages

I enjoyed it. For some reason I expected something worse. Shia wasn't as insipid as I would have thought. Pure paycheck role for Gary Oldman though.

Felt kind of rushed though. Not sure why it seemed that way. Hated the Amish subplot.

MakeEmLaugh

Finally got round to seeing this. Disappointed to say I found it a tad dull. Despite a two-hour running length, I never felt we got to know the characters. Much of the dialogue was so mumbled it was borderline incomprehensible (particularly from Tom Hardy) and Nick Cave's screenplay skirted close to cliché on more than one occasion (in one scene, Hardy asks Jessica Chastain 'What's a girl like you... want here?'. It must've taken all of Cave's willpower not to write 'What's a girl like you doing in a place like this?').

It wasn't terrible or anything. Visually, it was solid. But after so many Prohibition-era gangster films (Road to Perdition, Miller's Crossing, The Untouchables, Once Upon a Time in America, not to mention the Jimmy Cagney films of old) it felt entirely predictable. Shia LaBeouf's wooing of Mia Wasikowska was also stilted and unconvincing (they knew nothing about each other, much like the audience did about them).

Nervous Wreck

Awful film, made worse by LaBoeuf.