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This evening 8 August 2022 the 2012 film will be broadcast in prime time on Cielo, channel 26 of digital terrestrial television Lawless directed by John Hillcoat and presented in competition at the Cannes Film Festival.
At the center of the film is the story of the three Bondurant brothers, clandestine brandy traders during the years of Prohibition. Legend wants them to be immortal, at least until a man named Charlie Rakes appears on their path, a corrupt cop from Chicago who is determined to block their activity.
The script of the film was written by the famous singer-songwriter Nick Cave which was inspired by the novel The Western County in the World by Matt Bondurant, published in Italy by Dalai publisher with the title The wettest county in the world (2012). Upon its release, the film, a tribute to the author’s western, caused discussion for the scenes of violence that represented copious bloodshed. Whiskey, bullets and epic are the key elements of the film which is brought to the big screen by great Hollywood actors. The successful combination of directing (Hillcoat has directed, among others, The street based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy, Ed) and screenplay (Cave also signed the soundtrack of the film, Ed) produces a convincing result.
In the cast of the film we find big stars like Tom Hardy, Jessica Chastain, Gary Oldman, Mia Wasikowska, Guy PearceShia LaBeouf and Noah Taylor.
Let’s find out plot, trailer Of Lawless and the differences between book and film.
Lawless: the plot
The story is set in Virginia, in 1931. We are in full prohibition and the three Bondurant brothers earn their living through clandestine whiskey smuggling. These solitary mountaineers are cloaked in the aura of a family legend who wants them to be immortal.
The eldest is Forest (played by Tom Hardy, Ed), cynical and ferocious, who represents the Bondurant legend in everything.
The second of the three brothers is Howard, a veteran of the great war, who is also an avid drinker and seems to be disinterested in every activity. Finally there is Jack, the youngest and the one who narrates the story, who is also the most light-hearted and carefree of the three.
The life of the Bondurants changes when special agent Charlie Rakes (played by Guy Pearce, Ed) gets in their way, determined to block their smuggling business. The brothers are determined to get around it and are thus caught up in a spiral of tragedies, smuggling and murders that devastates the empire built by their father. Alongside the Bondurants are strong-willed and tenacious women, Maggie, Lucy and Bertha: each has its own precise role, the beauty of the Saloon, the mandolin player, the good religious girl.
The three brothers defy death – and the law – in a bloody epic that heralds its own tragic ending from the outset.
Lawless: the book by Matt Bondurant
The film is based on the novel by Matt Bondurant, The wettest county in the worldpublished in America in 2008 and in Italy by Dalai Editore in 2012. To write the book, the author was inspired by the true story of his grandfather, Jack Bondurant.
In addition to being a well-documented historical novel, The wettest county in the world it’s also a gangster story in which good guys and bad guys seem to switch sides: the cops are the very bad guys, while the gangstars are the ones to save. The narrator extensively recounts what life was like for illegal alcohol smugglers in old Virginia during the Great Depression. The main plot of the book is in fact inspired by a historical fact: the The Great Moonshine Conspiracy Trial of 1935, a trial held in Franklin County, which was intended to demonstrate the corruption linking illegal whiskey smugglers to local law enforcement agencies. The historical background has a preponderant prominence in the book which develops a tormented family saga in which relationships of love and brotherhood are undermined by an incipient economic crisis which finally, as we know, will lead to the Second World War.
It derives from this amalgam of themes and situations an old fashioned westerncloaked in nostalgia, which blends real life and epic telling an immortal story of resistance.
Lawless: the trailer
