Outlander (Movie Review)

How in the world did I miss this movie in theaters? Goes to show that I should check the new DVD releases every week!

This movie had a very narrow distribution in theaters in 2008 and that's a real shame, as fans of fantasy and sci-fi should certainly check this movie out at some point. It's not the best movie in the world, but it's not a terrible film, either.

I remained interested in the film for most of it's 115min runtime and was even grabbed in a few instances by some scary or otherwise shocking moments. The script was written by Dirk Blackman and Howard McCain, who both wrote the script for "Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans", their only other writing credit. "Outlander" is also only McCain's second movie as director(though he's done a little TV as well).

For fans of bloody sword fighting and battles with clanking armor, you'll get a pretty good fix in this flick. The fights are not espeically well choreographed, but they are still enjoyable and a few bits of shocking brutality serve as distraction from this minor shortcoming. The action scenes are shot pretty well and fun to watch, with a few very memorable moments. Good stuff.

Creature buffs may also find the monster in this movie interesting. When it was first revealed, I was unimpressed with the CGI, though it improves a little later in the film. The creature design, however, is visually interesting. The director uses a lack of light very well to keep the creature covered in shadow at times, letting our imagination do some of the work. But the creature is by no means hidden throughout the film. There are plenty of full shots of the monster in the second half of the movie that look great. I'll try not to spoil the conceptual design of the creature here, but it's definately a visual highlight of the movie. I wish I could have learned more about it's strengths and weaknesses, but it looks like they had other priorities for the film.

The cast, which includes names like Jim Caviezal, John Hurt and Ron Perlman, performed their roles somewhat blandly, though Caviezal had at least one good emotion-filled scene. There were no characters of real interest in this movie, unfortunately.

The plot is where this movie really suffers. Others may tell you that it is too far-fetched, but that wasn't my problem at all. I don't mind combining spacemen and aliens with 8th century Vikings. (That was a really COOL part of this flick!) I also don't mind that the main character is an alien who looks just like a human. (Roger Ebert didn't like this because it didn't fit in a logical Darwinian framework. "Yer a smart guy, Rog, but does ALL science fiction need to come from a Darwinian framework?") My problem is that the story focused on the least interesting plots in the movie.

You've got an A plot(the monster), a B plot (the spaceman-princess budding romance), a C plot(who will be the next king?) and a D plot(the spaceman's guilt), all given priority in that order. But the romance story is completely uninteresting because of the lack of compelling characters. In my opinion, the B plot could be completely removed from the story, greatly improving the final product. (Predator and The Thing didn't need a romantic subplot, did they?) It's not that the B plot scenes are bad. They are just boring and slow the pace of the movie.

Were I to re-edit this film for my own personal enjoyment, I would remove most of the B plot scenes and dig through the NUMEROUS deleted scenes on this DVD (I can't wait to look at all of them!) for scenes that support the D plot and put them back in the movie. While trying to avoid spoilers, I'll say that the D plot brings a great moral dilemma to the movie that is directly connected to the monster, unlike the B and C plots. But in the theatrical cut of the film, the D plot is downplayed so much that it seems like an afterthought.

I really want to give this movie a higher Veracity score than I am, because this movie asks the question "Do two wrongs make a right?" It asks the audience to wrestle with the concept of justice a little and provides opportunity for some meaningful conversation afterward, but not much.

In the end, this is a movie that is not solid enough for general audiences to enjoy, but genre fans should probably give it a rent at some point just to make sure they're not missing something they'll dig. Because a few people will probably really dig this movie.


Quality: 8.0/10

Veracity: 6.0/10