Lawless
Directed by John Hillcoat
Written by Nick Cave
Starring Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, Guy Pearce
The Weinstein Company
Rated R | 115 Minutes
Release Date: August 29, 2012

Directed by John Hillcoat (The Road) and based on Matt Bondurant‘s 2008 novel The Wettest County in the World, Lawless follows the legendary exploits of the Bondurant brothers in Prohibition-era Franklin County, Virginia, who made a living by bootlegging Moonshine across county lines and wheelin’ and dealin’ with Chicago mobsters.

Adapted into a screenplay by Nick Cave (of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds) Lawless stars Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, and Jason Clarke as Jack, Forrest, and Howard Bondurant, respectively, rebellious good old boys with a knack for moving white lightning through the Appalachian Mountains.

Business is good until Special Deputy Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce), a particularly brutal, prideful gentleman from Chicago, shows up on behalf of the District Attorney. Rakes wants a cut of the profits made by Franklin’s legendary bootleggers. To paraphrase the immortal Hall and Oates, the Bondurants can’t go for that (no can do). It’s North vs. South all over again as the Virginian outlaws battle the big-city scumbag who threatens their way of life.

Greetings! It’s Adam Frazier aka FamousMonster and it’s time for another transmission from Skull-Face Island. As always I’m joined by Oroku Saki, David Allen “” wait a second… where the HELL is David?

Guys, I hate to break it to you, but David is missing – he was last seen down by the lagoon with a fishing pole and a pack of Marlboro Reds. Producer Tim Grant and myself tried to find David before this week’s transmission but alas, we didn’t have enough time to coordinate with the natives and organize a proper search party. I’m sure he’ll turn up eventually…

Being as David is probably somewhere whistlin’ the theme to The Andy Griffith Show, Tim pulls double-duty this week as producer and co-host, so you’ll get to hear him butcher names and slur his speech as he drinks Dale’s Pale Ale and curses my name under his breath.

If you weren’t involved in bootlegging during the Prohibition era, then you weren’t making any real money. Tom Hardy and Shia LeBeouf will play the Bondurant brothers in the upcoming crime drama Lawless, where they’ll take it upon themselves to seize the opportunities and dangers that bootlegging has to offer.

Now just a little over a week before the film’s release, a new red band trailer has arrived and it really glosses over the amount of violence and skin you will see in the movie.

Check it out below, and as always, this is obviously NSFW.

One of my most anticipated films to be released this year is Lawless, the latest feature from Australian filmmaker John Hillcoat — the director of the blisteringly brilliant 2005 western The Proposition and the 2009 screen adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road — that is based on the acclaimed historical novel The Wettest County in the World by Matt Bondurant.

Now, the first trailer for the film has made its debut online. You can watch the trailer here below.