Outlander
With a pretty strong internet fan following, Outlander has interested me for the last few years, but I never got around to seeing it. Admittedly, when I saw the preview, I thought it looked a bit hokey, like one of those silly movies you see on the SyFy Network. But no, the internet clamored, it isn't like that at all!! The special effects may not be great, because the budget was so small, but this is a well-acted and well-constructed bit of genre-bending fun. So influenced by these reviews, I finally sat down and excitedly dug in to watch some alien-Viking fun.
You know what? My initial gut feeling was right. Outlander is not good. It's not good at all. Other than some nifty ideas, this movie is a huge dud. Why is this getting so much love???
The idea, at least, is solid. Jim Caviezal (The Passion of the Christ) plays Kainan, an alien who crashes on Earth in the 8th Century, during the time of the Vikings. He didn't crash alone. A monster named the Moorwen was on the ship, as well. A creative-looking creature, the Moorwen is a large, slimy reptilian being that glows red or blue when it is getting ready to attack. The Moorwen is way too powerful for this primitive society, and now the Vikings must team up with Kainan to somehow find a way to hunt the creature down.
The idea is intriguing, a mix of 13th Warrior and Predator. And the cast is promising, including John Hurt (Alien) and Ron Perlman (Hellboy) as rival Viking leaders, Jack Huston (Broadwalk Empire) as a Viking prince and Sophia Myles (Tristan and Isolde) as a tough, sword-wielding princess.
But the cast is pretty much wasted. In fact, I don't even know why Ron Perlman took the part...
SPOILER ALERT! Why do you hire someone as cool as Perlman for such a waste of a role?!? He's in the movie for all of three minutes before his head goes pop. What was the point of casting him?! SPOILER OVER!
Back to the movie. I'm not going to complain about the special effects. They had no budget and did the best they could. They actually have a lot of fun with the glowing Moorwen and mask their limited resources fairly well. Kudos to them. But I can complain about a weak script full of unfulfilled ideas. I can complain about poorly staged action that is confusingly edited (that battle scene between the Viking armies makes no sense). I can complain about the disappointing acting from actors I generally like. I can complain that this movie is held in fairly high regard, which baffles me to no end. And I can definitely complain about losing two hours of my life that would have been better spent playing Borderlands with my buddy or staring at a wall doing nothing. It's all very confusing to me, and annoying. Avoid Outlander.
BEST LINE:
Kainan: "This thing has carved out a territory and you're in it!"
MVP:
Tough call with this cast. Caviezel alternates from being inspired to listless, depending on the scene and what he is asked to do. Hurt does add some prestige to the proceedings, but is mostly wasted. Perlman is pointless. And Sophia Myles probably puts in the best overall performance, but is weighted down by too many lady warrior cliches that just can't be overcome. That leaves me with Jack Huston, grandson of legendary director John Huston. Though just a side character, Jack Huston's Wulfric might actually be the only character who has a true narrative arc. Next in line to the Viking throne, he is equal parts dashing, arrogant, foolish and inspiring. At the film's start, he seems pegged as a bad guy, a stubborn rival to Kainan, and eventually a tasty meal to the Moorwen. But the character shifts at a certain point, as he learns more about the threat facing his village while also learning what it takes to be a leader. The movie unfortunately does not explore this theme, but I could see this sense of dawning comprehension in Huston's face. It's a nice performance and the one that lingers when the movie ends.
TRIVIA:
This is actually cool. Apparently, this is the first movie to actually use the ancient Norse language. This is the alien language that Kainan speaks in the beginning of the film, before his weird eyeball/downloadable translator thing teaches him how to speak English. Director Howard McCain hired an Icelandic professor to translate parts of the script and help the actors speak the language. Caviezal especially gets some props for speaking the language so fluently. But as we've seen in the past, he's good at that sort of thing!
