Lawless

3/5

I have to give the movie a lot of credit for its handful of great performances (Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Daniel DeHaan, and Guy Pearce specifically). But most of the movie I was frustrated. Why did I need to be told this story? For someone like me who doesn't know the intricacies of the prohibition bootleggers, it really wasn't clear until the end that the significance of this story was. And that was its downfall. It was a story with a lot of style, but no real point to it for a long time. And, I hate to say this, but all of the great acting was brought down a notch by Shia LaBeouf. Why, oh why is he acting? He was overacting or he was just annoying. And I can think of a few choice actors to replace him with, who also more closely resembled the other two brothers (my top choice being Andrew Garfield). All in all, it's one a lot of people are going to appreciate the grittiness, but that's really about all this had to it. The performances are enough to raise it a fair amount in my ranking.