Were it not for Killer Joe, Lawless would almost certainly be 2012’s standard-bearer for stylized violence, regarding blood and guts as substances just as important to its function as plot or character. That’s fair, given the particular violence of the era, but what’s so striking about the throat-slittings and tommy-gun massacres of John Hillcoat‘s film isn’t the level of violence, but the calm its characters exhibit in the face of it. Its protagonists, the Bondurant brothers, are a trio of outlaw bootleggers, the leader of which survived the Great War, the flu, and all manner of worldly calamity. When you’ve got a reputation as an immortal, I guess it’s no big thing, watching another man get perforated. (more…)