Review of Outlander (2008) by Josh S — 04 Aug 2012

"Outlander" starts so strong. An alien 'man' crash lands a spaceship on Earth and with the use of his advanced technolgies, painfully aquaints himself with the new world. Truth be told, there's nothing particularily 'new' about his surroundings because he's landed during the time of the Vikings. These opening moments are the very best parts of "Outlander". From this point, the lead character, played in a very appealing and low-key manner by Jim Caviezel, predictably bumps into the Vikings and things get a little boring while they become familiar with each other. The action then escalates and we've learned enough about the characters to care about what happens to them when a strange and fierce enemy enters their village.

The bummer is that this movie starts in such a promising fashion. The alien from the future that experiences this ancient new world ends up at one point getting drunk and eating with his hands with a bunch of the usual dirty, sword-carrying primatives. Blah. It all goes the wrong direction for me, but I did like the performance of Caviezel, the design of the enemy and the cool opening.