Lawless wants to be something larger than life, but it's too joyless to be a tall tale and too self-satisfied for tragedy.

Hillcoat makes a foray into Virginia's Prohibition-era moonshine country. But the adaptation (by Hillcoat compadre Nick Cave) is a hokey piece of pop history that wearyingly insists upon its own mythos like a comic-book blockbuster.

It's slight and casual to the point of laziness, but it's straight fun, done with knowledge and a laconic pleasure. You could do far worse.

"Lawless" has its easily definable good guys, bad guys, and, most crucial of all, the morality play that plugs in emotion to a foreign and past barbaric time.