Review of Outlaw! (1999) by Adam L — 12 Nov 2007

* Review contains some spoilers! * The movie starts off well enough, showing how justice is failing the innocent and respectable people of England and how the streets are full of thugs, it's seemed quite realistic having encountered those sort of people myself.

Ex-para Sean Bean decides to make a stand with the help of an unbalanced security guard (whose name eludes me now) and start a vigilante group to tackle the low lifes who the law seems to ignore. However any potential it had soon turns lame.

Sean Bean is supposed to be an ex-para having served in the Falklands, Iraq, etc, yet shows little or no signs of any army training. For example his face is caught on CCTV when he takes his mask off (when none of the other 'amateurs' do) and he looks more like he is paint balling in the final scenes, rather than having being previously involved in world conflicts! Danny Dyer (playing himself as usual) starts off as a wimp and ends up as the hardened character (much like Straightheads and a few other similar roles he seems to repeat), there is a lawyer whose wife and child are murdered by a gangland boss and some other tool who was knifed for no reason, but says or does little throughout the entire movie (if someone knifed me and I had the opportunity of revenge then I would certainly bust them up with an axe handle, at a minimum!).

The security guard was the only one who seemed to know the true meaning of being a vigilante (even if he was a nutter), you don't get a conscience at the last minute! The ending is just plain stupid, no gangland boss would pay off a nobody on his own, he would send one of his grunts to deal with it, it was totally lame.

For me the violence was also pretty weak as well or maybe I'm just too desensitised to it now, but it takes more than a few swear words, wobbling the camera around and slapping someone a couple of times, which brings me to the appalling camera work, it's as if the cameraman had epilepsy of something, it's horrible and enough to make you have a fit yourself.

It's worth a watch if you've got nothing better to do, but any potential faded away in the first 30 minutes. Disappointing, like most British cinema. Shame.