Lawless

John Hillcoat’s film is narrated by Jack and follows him, but the brother it cares about is Forrest. Tom Hardy plays him almost entirely in grunts, so a scene’s weight falls on whoever is opposite, and whenever Jack’s story moves the camera turns to the silent brother. Violence here is administered, not choreographed: no build up, over quickly. Nick Cave wrote the screenplay and, with Warren Ellis, the music, the boldest decision here: it has Ralph Stanley singing the Velvet Underground’s White Light/White Heat as mountain music and Captain Beefheart’s Sure ’Nuff ’n Yes I Do, plus Emmylou Harris, Mark Lanegan and Willie Nelson. The source is Matt Bondurant’s 2008 novel The Wettest County in the World; he is Jack’s grandson. In Newsweek he wrote that the family knew their grandfather ran liquor but never discussed it, and that when his father turned up clippings about the 1930 shooting at Maggodee Creek bridge, the old man only lifted his shirt to show the bullet hole. Set in Virginia, it was shot around Atlanta in early 2011; the title came in March 2012, in time for the Cannes competition. A good fit if you want Forrest’s local legend of indestructibility tested rather than admired. Not for anyone troubled by the throat cutting or by Cricket’s killing held rather than cut around.