Lawless (2012) on Netflix
1931, Franklin County, Virginia. The Bondurant brothers run a moonshine operation behind their gas station, until a new lawman, Charley Rakes, demands a cut of every bootlegger's profits.
- Netflix4.1/5
- IMDb7.2/10264,238 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes67%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1931, the Bondurant brothers run a moonshine business in Franklin County, Virginia. Forrest, the middle brother, leads the operation; Howard supplies the muscle, and Jack, the youngest, keeps watch. Their gas station and restaurant hide the work, and Jack's friend Cricket builds and tends the stills. Local police take bribes and leave them alone. Then Charley Rakes arrives, a newly appointed U.S. Marshal, with the corrupt state's attorney Mason Wardell. Rakes demands a cut of the profits from every bootlegger in the county. Forrest refuses. Rakes begins pursuing the brothers. Forrest hires Maggie, a dancer who needs money, as a waitress. Jack attends a church service drunk to get near Bertha, the preacher's daughter. Forrest asks the county's other bootleggers to join him against Rakes, but they decline.
Cast
- Tim Tolinas Mason Wardell
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Lawless (2012)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Shia LaBeouf was the first actor cast, as youngest brother Jack, with James Franco attached to play Howard and Ryan Gosling to play Forrest, and Amy Adams and Scarlett Johansson also attached. The film, first called The Wettest County in The World after the novel, was then retitled The Promised Land.
- Hillcoat meant to start shooting in February 2010, but in January the project fell apart over financing and only LaBeouf remained. He said that after seeing Bronson, "I went home and wrote Tom [Hardy] a letter saying I was a fan. He sent me a script, and I sent him Lawless."
- Matt Bondurant's 2008 historical novel The Wettest County in the World was based on the Prohibition-era moonshine bootlegging of his own grandfather Jack Bondurant and grand-uncles Forrest and Howard.
- Cave said that before Guy Pearce was cast, Rakes was very much the nasty country cop of the book: "We made him a city cop, gave him his disturbed sexuality and all the rest of it." Pearce created the hairstyle worn by Rakes in the film.
- Cave scored the film with Warren Ellis, and the two deliberately avoided a top-shelf Americana soundtrack, playing the music themselves with a couple of musicians they knew even though, as Cave put it, their bluegrass chops were pretty limited.
