Outcast starts in the Middle East as an older soldier played by Nicholas Cage encourages a younger soldier played by Hayden Christensen of Star Wars prequel fame to question the morality of the Crusades. Three years later, that young soldier ends up in the Far East during a disastrous regime change and decides to take the side of the ruler with the worst chances for surviving while audiences are left wondering if Cage will ever appear again.
Outcast is a dud. Occasionally I’ll wonder if an actor is good or if my first bad association with the actor is actually a problem that resides with the movie, not the actor. Despite accolades from the artsy fartsy film community, I never buy that Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart are good actors. I watched the entire Twilight franchise because I really will watch anything with vampires, but it shouldn’t be considered an endorsement. At the very least, since Twilight, they make interesting choices (or receive better opportunities) that imply that they aren’t all sizzle, no steak. Sadly Christensen definitely resolves this dilemma. He is like a charisma black hole in which anything interesting gets sucked away into nothingness and all that is left is a vacuum of disinterest and ennui. Those prequels never stood a chance.
I realized that if someone like Travis Fimmel of Vikings and Warcraft fame occupied the same role, Outcast could have been saved because he would not have stayed on one note. He may not be the best actor, but he makes counterintuitive choices in his action dramatic roles, which generally makes the material more intriguing than it has any right to be. He never got the memo that to be a tough guy, a man should act one way. His soft-spoken, gentle demeanor is a great counterbalance to his physicality so when he does spur into action, I awaken to the importance of a scene. There are zero gradations in Christensen’s performance-he is either on the verge of losing or has the upper hand. Yawn! Centering any film around a bore, as attractive as he may be, would hurt any movie, and while Christensen is hot, he isn’t distinctively hot enough to make him memorable.
Outcast never reaches Xena: The Warrior Princess levels of anachronistic fun. It consistently sets up moments that are anti-climatic when the bill comes due. For instance, the script seems to set up the fact that the women are the bodyguards of this film. How? These chicks have little to no skills and fold like a lawn chair. They are the soul sisters of the damsels in distress that used to get tied to railroad tracks. The younger brother is supposed to be a better leader than his older brother. The sister makes this big elaborate speech about her confidence in him, and he gets snatched seconds later. Dude can’t even play hide and seek. They save a little girl when they stumble upon her village being attacked. It seemed like the movie was snagging a little love interest and future queen for the kid, which is a bit of an odd storyline, but I’ll go with it. After one scene of dialogue, I forgot that she existed. The baddest man in the kingdom shanks someone with zero skills in the gut with his torso length sword, but that person is totally fine. How? The most dissonant moment is this brief PSA that daughters are just as important as sons. Cool. Evil woman gets punched in the face by grown ass man with mad fighting skills. May I get neither scene? I’d rather skip the equally valued daughter scene if it has to come with bitch getting sucker punched. She wasn’t even a fighter, which would make contextual sense. He was just mad at her obvious treachery. I guess that someone is a mean drunk. I’ll keep the anti-rape PSA.
The moment that you have been waiting for has finally arrived: how was Cage in Outcast? He obviously cared because he sports some kind of accent, but then I wondered if he was doing an impression of a pirate. I would not recommend watching the movie for this performance, but it is one of the weird ones, and I wonder if Johnny Depp’s Pirates of the Caribbean franchise inspired his take on the character, which isn’t a bad thing. People rag about his hair, but the topknot half down hairstyle didn’t bother me. I had a problem with the fact that his character was touchy about being called an outlaw. Sticks and stones, buddy. What bothered me was the fact that his wife got more emotional development and screen development after she died than when she was alive! Cage doesn’t hurt the movie, and he doesn’t save it. He is just another brick in the wall.
Outcast is a moralistic action movie that doesn’t have enough good actors or better writers to make the dramatic moral portion resonate, and the action is unmemorable so you don’t get a thrill when watching the battle scenes. It is a movie with no marks of distinction or notes of excellence. It isn’t even so bad that it is fun. Literally anything else is better. If I had to give it a good note, I suppose that I could praise the diversity because there are a few brown to black people, and most of them aren’t evil. There is one actor who seemed invested in his job. He played a general willing to throw down if the older brother was found guilty. He appears once and does not appear in the denouement, which seemed like a dumb choice. He was the real MVP.