Good and very interesting movie

must watch

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In 1931 Virginia, backwoods brothers dealing in moonshine are not so much concerned with their competitors as they are with the new (and utterly corrupt) deputy in-cahoots with the weak-willed local law. Screenwriter Nick Cave, adapting Matt Bondurant's factual book, writes pummeling scenes of violence, all of which director John Hillcoat appears to revel in. For every interesting scene of human interaction, there are two or more sequences of bloody brutality (culminating in a castration bit--apparently played for a squeamish guffaw--which is as purposeless as it is revolting). The well-produced picture has a solid cast, though it wastes its actors on poorly-conceived material (particularly Gary Oldman, in a glorified cameo, playing a suave gangster who just about evaporates). And with whom are we supposed to root for? These siblings, hellbent on retaliation, are just as nasty and ruthless as their enemies. ** from ****

First, Tom Hardy is one of my favorite all-time actors. His slow, lackadaisical manner in this movie is so much like Southern "boys", then and now. No, I am not exactly a Southern Boy, but I served with a number of them in the Military. I am a transplanted Lower Indiana boy, in the East. This movie will get my third viewing, having finished watching it 2x already. The comment by "WildBullWriter" is spot on: Southern rural hill people. Unless one understands the guts and glory of the hard-scrubbed rural folk across our land in the 1900s through WWII, they will not understand how historical fiction speaks to historical reality in this film. Guy Pearce as Charlie Rakes is superb in his role as a Chicago "gangsta". Ruthless to his core, Rakes "gets his" in the end. Country folk never have cared much for the high falutin Dandies from the big cities! 😃

For all it's worth, it's a film worth watching, but there are some boring bits here and there. There is also the lack of "heart", so to speak, the plot is above average, yet the end result is quite good.

Director John Hillcoat and writer Nick Cave teamed up to make The Proposition, a great film that was also about a band of brothers up against a ruthless lawman. Maybe that is why they were both hired for this film, based on a war between Virginia moonshiners and lawmen. The magic of The Proposition is not here, however. That is not to say it wasn't a good movie. Three brothers, Jack Bondurant (Shia LaBeouf), Forrest Bondurant (Tom Hardy), and Howard Bondurant (Jason Clarke), watch each others backs as the crooked law tries to move in on them. Somebody forgot to tell the lawman that the Bondurant brothers were invincible.

This movie was a movie that made no impact on the human race whatsoever. The acting was wooden (except for Guy Pearce who was more like a cartoon character), it was stop-and-go pacing meaning that there were too many pointless scenes, and it took too much time for too little information. I feel like this movie started out with a good script with possibly creative ideas for execution, but then good ole Hollywood interfered and turned it into this. There were two romances in it that had nothing to do with anything. There was a scene where it is implied that something traumatic happens to one of the female characters; it was never addressed again. Also, the villain barely had a motivation for committing the acts that he did. All in all, it was not a terrible movie, but it could have been a whole lot better.