'Lawless': Moonshiners take on corrupt lawmen

THE VERDICT is in: Tom Hardy is officially Hollywood's go-to guy for hulking brutes who talk with their fists.

He was the mixed martial arts goon in "Warrior" and the muzzled Bane in "The Dark Knight Rises," and now - in "Lawless" - he plays the Spartan-tongued leader of a Virginia clan of mountain moonshiner men who repel an invasion of crooked gummint flatlanders.

Hardy plays broad-shouldered Forrest Bondurant, a man who's survived so many threats to his life it's rumored he cannot be killed. This status has made him the unquestioned local leader of a Prohibition-era corn liquor business. Brother Howard (Jason Clarke) is the distiller, and younger brother Jack (Shia LaBeouf) is the hotshot hot-rod transporter who backroads the booze to Chicago.

LaBeouf makes a strategic attempt to try something new here - he's his usual jabbering, outwardly cocky self, but here adds a layer of self-doubt. His outward bravado hides an inner lack of courage, and threatens the Bondurant clan when a new law-enforcement official comes to town.

His name is Charlie Rakes (an eccentric Guy Pearce), and he has no overriding interest in arresting or shutting down their operation. He holds that out as a threat to induce the Bondurants to pay a larger bribe to look-the-other-way government officials.

No deal, says the prideful Forrest, and the war is on - staged with moments of violent panache by director John Hillcoat, the Aussie who made the memorable "Proposition," also with Pearce.

Hillcoat's reputation as an up-and-comer (he also made "The Road") has attracted a first-rate cast: Jessica Chastain is a barkeep with eyes for Forrest, Mia Wasikowska a preacher's daughter with eyes for Shia and Gary Oldman a Chicago mobster.

The parts, however, work better than the whole. "Lawless" is often listless, in need of a unifying dramatic arc (a problem at 116 minutes). The war between the Bondurants and their government antagonists is driven by accidental encounters rather than active rivalry. Pearce often seems less interested in the Bondurants than in the women he has tied up in the bedroom of a local hotel. Oldman in particular seems primed for a pivotal role that never materializes.

All of this is no doubt a consequence of the story's fact-based roots - it's drawn from novelist Matt Bondurant's family history, and in this case the real-life story deflates the blaze-of-glory finale the movie's staging seems to promise.