RBR: Lawless

Somewhere buried inside Lawless, the true story of the Bondurant brothers who ran the biggest moonshine outfit in Virginia during prohibition, is a really good movie. It's unfortunate that director John Hillcoat is unable to get that on screen. For everything going for this film, there seems to be some sort of counteracting element. Tom Hardy, who more people saw as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises this summer, actually gives a more compelling performance here as Forest Bondurant. He is a man of few words and yet you hang on to everything he says. But then there's Shia Labeouf who is completely out of place here. Too much of the film centers around his petulant character that becomes more grating as the movie goes along. Labeouf's hacky performance though is not the only problem with this film. Gary Oldman who plays a Chicago gangster is excellent as always but is severely underutilized. I expected him to play a much larger role, yet by the film's climax he's completely gone. There are also some major pacing issues with the film. The first half of the film feels very choppy and unfinished. Scenes are strung together with no real coherency. At times I felt like I had been drinking moonshine and kept blacking out. The second half of the film turns into a traditional shoot-out that felt needlessly bloody and violent without giving a completely satisfactory conclusion. While I've focused on a lot of the negatives, I don't want to give the impression that this is a film without merit. The flaws of this film are only more apparent because of how close it was to being a great movie. I think if the subject matter is of interest to you, I would definitely recommend checking this film out now that it's available to rent. Though it's not a 100 proof, there's still enough here to give you a decent buzz. Rating: ****

Making a good first Depression

Check out the preview for Lawless, a Depression-era drama set to come out this summer. It's an effective trailer for a film that has an impressive cast, even if Shia LeBeouf feels woefully out of place here amongst the rest of the talented actors. This may serve as some effective adult counter-programming among the rest of the blockbusters aimed at younger audiences.

Woe, the humanity

Try as I might, I just can't help myself from seeing these Transformers movies, despite being less than enamored with the previous entries. Blame the heat wave this time as I was merely trying to find respite and decided going to the theater was the best way to cool off.

Yes, the robots in disguise are back for a third time in Transformers: Dark of the Moon - an admittedly better effort than the awful second film, but one still plagued with problems. The story this time around ties in the real life events surrounding the first moon landing. Apparently, a ship carrying important Transformers technology had crashed on the moon and was discovered by the first American astronauts when they travelled to the dark side of the moon - a fact that had been kept a secret until now. Both Autobots and Decepticons want the technology and naturally, that eventually leads to another big battle between the two groups.

Of course, such an epic battle wouldn't be complete until there's a way to shoehorn Sam Witwicky (Shia Lebeouf) right into the middle of the action. This character may be one of the lest likable characters in the history of film. Some of it has to do with Lebeouf's grating 'acting'. But a lot of the blame falls on director Michael Bay and the film's writers. It was one thing to craft him as a whiny, petulant teen in the first film but the character has supposedly graduated from an Ivy League college and experience two robot wars and yet still behaves the same way. Despite his educational background he can't find a job (I guess that's Bay's way of trying to make the film relevant of our time) and whines about not being included in our country's usage of the Autobots. Why didn't this guy just join the army if he wanted to fight alongside his robot friends all the time? Yet, despite all of his very apparent flaws, he still manages to get hot, supermodel girlfriends. This time it's newcomer Rosie Huntington-Whitley, who easily replaces Megan Fox in the role of vapid hottie with no discernible acting skills.

Lebeouf's Witwicky is far from the only problem with the film - frankly every single human character in the film is bothersome. At best, they are one-dimensional (What were actors like Ken Jeong, Andrew Daly, and even, John Malkovich doing in this film) and at worst, they mug for the camera and take up way too much screen time that should have been devoted to the real conflict between the Autobots and the Decepticons. There are large set pieces devoted to putting the human characters in peril and all I kept thinking was 'What are Optimus Prime, Megatron, and the rest of the key Transformers doing right now?' Had this been a film that had taken place on Cybertron, the Transformers' home planet and there were no human characters, this would have been infinitely a better film.

The scenes that do feature robot on robot carnage are admittedly very cool. Bay introduces some new ones that look great and do a lot of damage. He also eliminated any of the problematic one, like the racists twins or the one with 'robot balls'. I'm also glad I made the decision to see the film in 3D. It was clear that Michael Bay had the technology in mind when he created the film and the scenes that utilize the technology really pop off the screen. If more films could find a way to use 3D in this way, the technology wouldn't catch as much flack as it currently is.

I will give Michael Bay some credit in that he did seem to make a concentrated effort to fix some of the large issues that people had with the second film. The humor is kept to the minimum and isn't offensive this time. There also isn't as much exposition. They keep the storytelling fairly simple and just get straight to the action. I just wish they had allowed the action to be more centered around the robot. The one character that really gets short-changed here is Megatron, who not only loses screen time to the human characters, but also gets marginalized by his characters like Optimus Prime and newcomer, Sentinel Prime (voiced by Leonard Nimoy).

Those who are Transformers fans will likely have made peace already with Michael Bay's drawbacks as a director and will enjoy this improved effort. It's unlikely that those who have no care for this franchise will suddenly be lured in by this third film. I will say though that because the 3D is so well used here, that it is one of the few films that I would recommend seeing in the theater if you are going to see it. The characters will be one-dimensional no matter how you view it, so you might as well give your eyes a treat and let all the matter, debris and robot arms fly out at you to hopefully distract you from the poor acting that's on display. This is noisy entertainment, but sometimes it's fun to watch these robots hidden as cars pop out and start fighting one another. I just wish the humans weren't robots in disguise as well. Grade: C+