Lawless Reviews
Badass Digest
If only LAWLESS weren't such a superficial endeavor, these parts would add up to a very entertaining whole. As is, the movie is fun while it lasts but forgettable soon after.
We Got This Covered
Lawless is a failure. It is a difficult and infuriating movie to sit through, one that does not reward the audience's patience with anything of substance.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Top CriticA character study that puts its focus on its least sympathetic characters.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
The Ooh Tray
Measured performances from the leading triumvirate of LaBeouf, Hardy and Pearce wet the whistle but there's no long finish.
Quickflix
Utterly untroubled by any expectation to entertain - or even mildly engage - the audience, Hillcoat and screenwriter Nick Cave take a stroll through 1930s Virginia with the enthusiasm of beleaguered berry-pickers rather than raucous bootleggers.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
San Diego Union-Tribune
A steady, though rather lifeless backwoods crime drama.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
Inauthentic, a movie pulled together by a lot of folks who had no feel for the setting or the story they were telling.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
Birmingham Post
The film is taglined 'When the law became corrupt, outlaws became heroes', but as a welcomely unheroic picture it rarely threatens to truly take off.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Birmingham Mail
( .. ) after starting off narrating the story very well indeed, [Shia LaBeouf] ends up mumbling too much. Come again?
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
I can only admire this film's craftsmanship and acting, and regret its failure to rise above them.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Hardy's an exceptional actor, and LaBeouf has a certain fizzy charisma, but they each twang embarrassingly every time they have a sentence or two to utter, and not even in a way that matches.
This should've been a really good picture, especially with Hillcoat's crack ensemble. Instead it's a stilted battle waged between the material and the interpreters.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Doddle
Blue Ridge Mountain veracity aside, the story's got to have more kick than some two-bit swill that even Ma Barker's Ma wouldn't swallow.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/10
L.A. Weekly
Never-not-fun junk food enlivened by good actors and a thin ghosting of Hollywood-style "relevancy", but only barely enough actual substance to keep the shoot-em-ups interesting.
AALBC.com
An over-the-top indulgence in sadism strictly recommended for folks with a stomach for gangster fare so gruesome as to border on the cartoonish.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
Reno News and Review
Shia got on my nerves in this one.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Tri-City Herald
Lawless fails to lay down the law.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
EntertainmentTell
I spent most of the running time wishing I was home watching Deadwood or Justified instead.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
3AW
Every time things heat up, the film down-shifts just long enough to keep you from getting too engaged in the characters, some of whom disappear for reels before popping up again.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
