Lawless isn't the only recent action film featuring Tom Hardy and brothers at odds. Also: Killer mutant cow fetuses!
If you're in the mood for a rousing blend of testosterone and tears: Warrior (2011, Gavin O'Connor)
It’s a common thing to find a film that suffers from overindulgence in cliché. It’s another to find a film that reminds you why those clichés became accepted in the first place. Gavin O’Connor’s Warrior falls firmly into the latter camp. In this tale of estranged brothers both training for the same mixed-martial-arts tournament, there isn’t a plot point or an emotional beat played out here that you haven’t seen elsewhere before — it’s essentially a Wallace Beery wrestling movie updated to the MMA age, with family dysfunction added in for extra weepy power. It’s cheap and manipulative and hoary, shamelessly deploying every underdog trope it can scavenge. And I’ll be damned if it doesn’t unexpectedly work like gangbusters. As well-spun as the script for Warrior is, it wouldn't fly without a capable cast to sell it. From top to bottom, the acting is as strong as the beefy guys in the cage during the climactic MMA tournament. Edgerton, as the elder brother having trouble making ends meet, is credibly scrappy and tough without being thuggish — an unassuming guy whose heart is his most dangerous muscle. Tom Hardy is a fierce ball of fire as the younger brother, a coiled bundle of furious energy hunched over like an especially angry bull and a solid counterpoint to the modest Edgerton. Nick Nolte's Oscar nomination for his role here was deserved: His portrayal of this wounded-lion, recovering alcoholic of a father figure, sheepishly trying to ingratiate himself back into the life of two men who have been too scarred by his past exploits to trust him, is a quiet marvel. Like its characters, Warrior is best when it's keeping its emotions tamped down — the climax features some outsized emotional breakdowns that push too hard to get those eyes watering. But overall, it's an unusually effective brawny tearjerker. You'll be one step of it the entire way, and you'll be into it anyway.
If you're in the mood for a creepy entry in the body-horror genre: Isolation (2005, Billy O'Brien) Dan (John Lynch) has a cow that is obviously in a good deal of discomfort. The cow, hugely pregnant, is giving signs that it's ready to drop its calf soon, but something just isn't right. Orla (Essie Davis), the attending veterinarian, decides to delve into the poor cow to see what the problem might be. While she's elbow-deep, though, something inside the offending womb grabs ahold of her. When she manages to extricate her arm, she discovers that she's been bitten on the hand.
Billy O'Brien's queasy rural horror film Isolation has a lot of moments like that. It’s an intense shot of body horror, heavy on the cow intestines and built around shadowy glimpses of a spiny, skittering creature that should not be. Genetic manipulation is the bugbear here (Dan and Orla have accepted money to have Dan’s cows experimented on by the not-at-all ominous-sounding corporation Bovine Genetics Technology), but while some directors would use that as a cudgel against the audience, O’Brien is mostly interested in building enough atmosphere to choke a bull. O’Brien has a terrific sense of pacing and tension, exemplified (and personified) by an agonizing early scene where Dan, with the help of a standoffish squatter (Sean Harris), has to use a winch and a rope to ever-so-slowly pull out a mutated calf from inside its discomfited mother. Isolation is clearly a product of its influences – Cronenberg’s Shivers and The Brood both get visual nods, and the climax is pure Alien – but it stands on its own merits as an effectively tense bit of genre goods. (Isolation expires from Netflix Instant on September 9th.)
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