2. The Arrival of Shia Labeouf: Actor
Some actors attract negative attention from day one - whether thanks to their career choices or their backgrounds - and Shia Labeouf has had a lot to overcome in his quest to become a serious actor, considered for more considered and considerable roles than he is perhaps known for. Since breaking into the front-man business, the actor has had a rather uneasy run of things, most notably being forced to share the screen with Michael Bay's horrendous Transformers abominations, and hamstrung by the script issues of those projects. It is after all remarkably difficult to act when a script appears to have been written by a particularly obscene pre-teen with a fixation on the female form and the sexual shine of hot metal on metal action (and little to distinguish the two) and your creative director thinks robot balls are the height of comedy. But in Lawless, Labeouf gives us a hint of what he can really do, and in auspicious company no less - he is arrogant and pig-headed when necessary, driven by his confidence and his aspirational will, but wholly vulnerable and likable enough to play the heart of the film. Provided he chooses his next films well, and he is given the right opportunity to shine - which he has done now in both this and Wall Street 2 - Labeouf might well be able to cast off his rather limiting image. But then, as long as he still attracts the kind of venom that any praise of him seems to inspire, perhaps that might be a little way off, even after this very good performance.