LAWLESS: clueless

I'm at a loss to figure out exactly what kind of a film LAWLESS wants to be.
Is it a straight down the line period crime drama, a 21st century take on a period crime drama, a slightly humorous take on a period crime drama, or something else entirely?
Large parts of it reminded me of the 1989 Patrick Swayze "classic" 'Roadhouse' blended with dollops of 'The Dukes of Hazzard.'
What it most emphatically is not is a good movie.
Musician turned screenwriter Nick Cave seems unsure of how to pitch his story and director John Hillcoat is no help in helping him figure it out.

This Depression era (based on a true) tale of the three bootlegging Bondurant brothers (Shia LaBoeuf, Tom Hardy & Jason Clarke) and their bloody battle with the law in the mountains of Franklin County, Virginia, veers from dark and serious to wacky humor to sentimental folksiness without managing to settle anywhere.

Add to that a tendency on the part of many of the cast to mutter and mumble (Hardy in particular is no less intelligible after he's had had his throat cut than before), a ridiculously caricatured performance from Guy Pearce as a bizarrely foppish corrupt special deputy, and some period inappropriate music and the result is both unsettling and less than conducive to the willing suspension of disbelief.

And that's without mentioning what looks like some ill-advised editing decisions which have cut chunks out of the story and left some things hanging while rendering others irrelevant. The prime example of the latter is the brief appearance of Gary Oldman as a Chicago gang boss in a side story that adds almost nothing to the main events. Oldman also features in an example of the former, spectacularly shooting up a rival on the main street of the Bondurants home town in a murder that attracts absolutely no attention from anyone and is never spoken of again.
In both instances I was left with the impression that there was more to these two threads that had been cut out of the film in the interests of keeping the running time under two hours. Either that or poor storytelling technique. Perhaps the DVD release will reveal the director's true intentions.
As it stands, LAWLESS has little to offer beyond the violence and the blood. Hardy's brooding, monosyllabic good bad-guy soon tires, LaBoeuf is unconvincing and Jessica Chastain's character is misplaced and underutilised. She spends most of her time hanging around observing the action and waiting for the next of her meagre quota of lines.
LAWLESS proves that quirky does not necessarily equal good or even interesting.