I criticized the Korean monster flick The Host as a movie that understood its genre but didn't add much of its own. The same can be said of Howard McCain's 2008 movie Outlander, which takes an unbeatable premise -- Beowulf with intersteller alien monsters playing the part of Grendel -- and turns out a movie that's little more than watchable. The basic problem is that this is a ridiculous movie that doesn't realize it's ridiculous, so it finds a mediocre middle road sidestepping the poles of hilariously over-the-top and hilariously inept. It's as if Sam Raimi made Army of Darkness (rating:80) but then took out all the jokes.
The charisma-impaired Jim Caviezel doesn't help matters as the space-traveling Beowulf, though John Hurt and Ron Perlman spice things up as warring Viking chieftains. The overearnest script doesn't help matters either, with lines like, "If you believe that you write the tale of your life, then the end... is up to you." The dodgy CGI makes it hard to understand how in heaven they managed to spend $50 million. (American audiences felt that way too. The movie had a production budget of $50 million and made a grand total of $166,000 in American theaters, along with another $6 million abroad. Battlefield Earth made nearly five times as much. That makes it one of the more legendary flops of the decade.)
Caviezel plays a space traveler named Kainan whose spaceship crash lands in 8th century Norway. Unfortunately, he had evil beasties on his ship called Moorwens. Kidnapped by the local Vikings, he quickly makes himself useful once the beasties start attacking and he's the only guy who can explain what a Moorwen is. He starts out with a badass gun but loses it in one of the first scenes and never finds it again -- so I guess the screenwriters disagreed with Anton Chekhov, who once said that if you show a gun in the first act it has to go off in the last act. Caviezel also seems to disagree with Konstantin Stanislavsky, because he's terrible at acting.
Don't get me wrong -- it's not an awful movie. There are monsters and Vikings trying to kill those monsters, and lots of swords and blood. After midnight, with friends and popcorn, it's more than adequate. Caviezel's unchanging monotone gets tiresome, but he's decent enough at action scenes. So's Jack Huston, who plays his friend/rival Wulfric, a London-born grandson of John Huston. Above, I wrote that it's too competent to be so bad it's good, which is a backhanded compliment but also an acknowledgment that the movie, at a basic level, doesn't suck. Other than CGI shots of the monster and some overly hyperactive editing in a bearkilling scene, the movie looks good. Hurt and Perlman are always a pleasure to watch, and the female lead is spirited and cute without being a drag. But as far as enjoyably cheesy takes on Beowulf, it's not as good as Robert Zemeckis's dumb but fun CGI Beowulf (rating: 65), which became slightly famous for its image of Angelina Jolie on the head of a serpent as Grendel's sexy, dangerous mother.
So there you go. It's a Vikings and aliens movie. In a just world, it would be one of many hundreds. In our imperfect one, it's about the only show in town. Check it out if that's the mood you're in. If not, though... maybe wait a while.
Rating: 58
Crossposted on Remingtonstein.