Laws of Man opens with two U.S. marshals driving through the desert of Utah. Tommy Morton (Jackson Rathbone) is young and impulsive, a Korean war vet who is quick to open fire. Frank Fenton (Jacob Keohane) is older and more cautious. He also served in the military, though his service was during World War II. Frank is haunted by flashbacks to a particularly gruesome battle. Tommy and Frank may spend most of their time wearing black suits in the desert but neither one breaks a sweat.
The year is 1963. Kennedy is in the White House. The communists are on the move. And Tommy and Frank are busy executing arrest warrants in the most desolate part of the country. An attempt to arrest Mormon cult leader Crash Mooncalf (Ricard Brake) leads to a bloody shootout that leaves Mooncalf and his followers dead. Their next assignment leads them to a small town in Nevada, where Bill Bonney (Dermot Mulroney) and his violent family is suspected of killing local ranchers and stealing their land.
From the minute that Tommy and Frank arrive in Nevada, something feels off. They stay at a cheap motel, where Tommy picks up a woman named Dinah (Ashley Gallegos) and Frank spends his time talking to a bartender named Callie (Kelly Lynn Reiter). An old rancher named Don Burgess (Forrie J. Smith) shows off his gun and says that he would rather suffer a violent death than give up his land. A traveling preacher named Cassidy Whitaker (Harvey Keitel) approaches Frank in the parking lot and starts talking about sin and redemption. Meanwhile, FBI agent Galen Armstong (Keith Carradine) appears to be curiously unconcerned with the Bonneys and their reign of violence. As for the sheriff (Graham Greene), he spending his time sitting outside a burned-out ranch house. The charred bodies of the owners are still inside, seated around the dinner table.
An attempt to arrest Bill Bonney at his home leads to a violent shootout, one in which no one is killed but Bill is still not happy about having a bunch of bullet holes in his roof. Tommy and Frank attempt to serve the arrest warrant, just to discover that it’s not going to be as easy as they thought. Frank, whose World War II flashbacks are getting more and more intense, wants to leave town. Tommy, however, is obsessed with discovering what exactly everyone is hiding.
And, through it all, people who know their history will notice that the film is taking place in November of 1963 and the 22nd is rapidly approaching….
Laws of Man gets off to a strong start but begins to meander about halfway through. Luckily, the film’s final third features a wonderfully insane twist that recaptures the viewer’s attention. No matter what you may think is going on in the film, it can’t prepare you for just how weird things eventually get. Laws of Man is an entertaining film, one that is occasionally a bit too self-consciously quirky for its own good but which ultimately works. Jackson Rathbone and Jacob Keohane both give strong performances in the lead roles and the familiar faces in the film’s supporting cast all do their best to bring the film’s often surreal world to life. Dermot Mulroney and Keith Carradine give especially strong performance while Harvey Keitel appears to be having fun as the offbeat preacher.
Laws of Man managed to truly take me by surprise. For fans of paranoid cinema, it’s definitely worth making time for.
