 A FilmExposed Film Review |
 Dir: NICK LOVE, UK, 2007, 105 mins
Cast: Sean Bean, Danny Dyer, Bob Hoskins, Lennie James, Rupert Friend, Simon Hillier
Outlaw paints a picture of a Britain that is out of control – rife with corruption, violence and degradation. A group of men decide that enough is enough and take the law into their own hands in an attempt to place justice back into the hands of the people. Their backgrounds are diverse, ranging from a Cambridge art student (Friend) to a psychopathic security guard (Hillier), but all of them feel let down by the government and the legal process. When approached by an Iraq war veteran with a cache of heavy weaponry (Bean), the outlaw gang set about bringing down a London crime boss.
Perhaps intended as a wake-up call to the British public, it’s difficult to imagine anyone rallying behind this confusing mess of a manifesto. Lacking any sort of coherence in its ideological framework, Outlaw instead relies on the power of knee-jerk hysteria. This is not a radical film, but a reactionary one – based wholly on the premise that this country is going to the dogs and it’s about bloody time that someone stood up and did something about it. Whether you agree with that sentiment or not, Outlaw does nothing to convince you that it has a solution as it’s executed in such a shoddy manner as to make any social commentary null and void. The plot stops, starts and shudders along with the grace of a dying animal, the dialogue is risible to the point of unintended comedy and the camerawork is so self-consciously stylish that it makes the film virtually unwatchable.
While the cast is reasonably impressive from a marquee standpoint, it points to the problems at the heart of Outlaw. Bean, Hoskins and Dyer can certainly bring punters into the cinema, but none of them could ever be described as the sharpest tool in the box. Seeing them grunt and snarl at each other is somewhat akin to watching the monkeys discover tools at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Grieving prosecution barrister Lennie James acts as the moral compass of the group, torn between his respect for the law and his desire to avenge the brutal murder of his pregnant wife, but he’s portrayed as a wussy middle-class ditherer and his “should-we-really-do-this?” refrain quickly becomes irritating. He’s the only one of the gang to have a believable motivation, but his indecision points to the fundamental problem with the outlaw gang – they’re a bunch of idiots. Each one of their ‘missions’, whether robbing drug dealers of their money or simply duffing up blokes outside a pub, is undermined by their simple incompetence.
With its masculine agenda, hyperbolic camera work and anti-establishment ethos Outlaw desperately wants to be the Fight Club (1999) of UK cinema. Unfortunately, with its neolithic ideology and infantile attitude to violence it’s more like Death Wish (1974) for the new millennium. |
