This Tom Hardy Gangster Movie Is Also An Underrated Western

Gangsters get shot. It’s the standard in film, both an effective narrative device and one that comes from a history of gangster films where they required to portray criminals as bad people. At the time, movies about gangsters weren’t approved unless the gangsters got what they deserved, due to the restrictive censorship of the era of American history that immediately followed the major mob/mob period of the 1920s and 1930s. So what does a filmmaker do with a story about “indestructible” gangsters, like the real-life Bondurant family from Virginia who sold illegal liquor during Prohibition? Enter Lawlessa 2012 film about that family and their adventures, starring Tom Hardy, Jason Clarke and Shia LaBeouf as the three supposedly immortal Bondurant brothers.