Saturday, August 11, 2012

Review: Outlander


Outlander

Hey my buddy Mark came through again with a movie that I never thought I would see, because I had the completely wrong plot line and didn't pay attention to who was in it! Thanks Mark!

Starring:
James Caviezel, Sophia Myles, Jack Huston, with Ron Perlman and John Hurt

An alien ship crashes into a Norwegian lake in 709 AD. The lone survivor tells the locals of a horrific dragon-like animal that somehow got aboard his “ship” killing everyone aboard.

He manages to enlist the aid of some of the locals to aide him in killing the beast. Which it seems is problematic as it is impervious to iron age weapons.

Outlander doesn’t really telegraph it’s plot devices but it is evident that a lont of the movie scenes are a homage to earlier films in the genre.

That being said, the cast is great!

James Caviezel with whom I first became aware of in the TV program people of interest which is government conspiracy, mysterious super computer, and the machine’s very eccentric creator. Sophia Myles, Jack Huston, with Ron Perlman do I really have to say anything about Ron’s SF connections? and John Hurt who it goes without saying is so much better than you would have thought of him being. Great cast who took the movie seriously.

I really can not talk much about the second half of the movie other to say, but this time you know where the movie is going, but it is a fun trip.

The extras are a big surprise! Commentary, deleted scenes LOTS OF THEM, tests and more! This movie gave me more bang for the buck than most blu-rays! But then this was a purchase disk and not a rental, but it WAS A DVD.

In rating the movie - its an 8 for being derivative but then it WANTED to be! I really don’t know what I would want more from the dvd... So I am giving it a most excellent 10...18 overall or a respectable 9 which means that the movie is better because of technical reasons but it is still a strong recommendation to give it a go.

4 comments:

John said...

Yeah, I actually found this to be somewhat of a Sci-Fi Sleeper HIT... It was really entertaining and I was impressed. It kinda reminded me of how Equilibrium was somewhat of a sleeper hit too, except, this one was even more so.

Beam Me Up said...

Hi John, thanks for the note...Yep, that is it exactly, a sleeper. It is good despite itself. The director, in his comments, will all but admit to doing it tongue in cheek, but when it came time, everyone went for it. Even Ron P. jokingly called himself the first jewish viking, so you can imagine that for the most part all were in good spirits, but pulled their weight when the time came.

kallamis said...

I actually liked this movie myself. We saw this at like 11 at night at some point. I was surprised myself at how good a job they did with this.

Beam Me Up said...

Pretty much my thoughts Kall. If you get a chance, check out the DVD. The extra are really good, if you are into dvd extras. The deleted scenes alone are worth it!