Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here. Where the hell did this movie come from? That was pretty much my reaction when the invite to a screening of OUTLANDER dropped in my Inbox recently. Apparently, it came from the 2008 Cannes Film Festival last May and has been slowly creeping its way across the world toward the U.S. sine then. The film features real actors, clearly had some sort of budget, and has a story just wacky enough to pique my interest. Space man? Vikings? Killer alien creatures? Sign my ass up! Let's not get crazy, though. This movie is not a unbridled success, but it is a decent attempt to take an idea that sounds utterly ridiculous on paper and turn it into something somewhat thrilling. Outlander doesn't spare us all sorts of gruesome violence, superior hammy performances (with Ron Perlman and John Hurt in the cast, you'll get nothing less), and an almost unlimited supply of debauchery as only Hollywood Vikings can supply. Director and co-writer Howard McCain (probably best known now as the scriptwriter of the current draft of Brett Ratner's CONAN film) tells the story of Kainan (James Caviezel), an outer space man whose ship crash lands in a small lake in Norway. He is the sole survivor of the crash, which was caused by an alien beast known as a Moorwen sneaking on board and killing the rest of the crew. Using convenient technology that allow him to speak Viking (which sounds surprisingly like American-accented English), Kainan is captured by a tribe of Vikings living in the area. They think that he has massacred a nearby village, when it fact it was the Moorwen. We learn that the Moorwen also murdered Kainan's family back on his home planet (there's a part of me that wishes they'd just made Kainan a time-traveling human from the distant future after an alien attack of some sort). Eventually both the off-worlder (or "Outlander," as the Vikings call him) and the Vikings get their shit together and agree to slay the Moorwen together. Although Kainan drums up some pretty great traps to capture and kill the giant, near-invisible-at-dark Moorwen, it takes a fusing together of parts of his ship with Viking-style weapons to make swords and spears that will actually match the deadly creature. Plus, there's Hurt as Rothgar, the rather impish king of this particular Viking sect; the lovely Sophia Myles as Freya, his tough-as-nails daughter who wants to fight as much as she'd like to find a husband worthy of her; Jack Huston as Wulfric, the heir apparent to the crown and Freya's bed; and Perlman as Gunnar, the leader of another tribe of Viking warriors. The names alone scored points with me. But the funny thing is, the pacing of the film is solid, the attacks are nasty and loaded with suspense, and the conceit of melding alien monsters with Norseman is just goofy enough to work. There's a lot of Viking screaming (think 300, but with pelts rather than loincloths) and chest puffing, and that gets old after a while, but I'll admit I kind of got sucked into this nutty adventure tale. Caviezel does a workman's job of playing his character straight and conveying a sense of desperation and knowing that sold me on a lot going on in this film that I otherwise might not have been able to forgive. As I said, there's nothing great about this OUTLANDER, but if you're in the mood for big, dopey fun that actually has a concept I'm fairly certain you've never seen before, you might like to try this one on for size. It certainly surprised the hell out of me how much of it worked. -- Capone capone@aintitcoolmail.com
