Outlander (2008)

Don't Believe the Hype

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

During the reign of the Vikings, a man from another planet crash lands on Earth and unfortunately brings with him a giant alien beast known as the Moorwen. Not only that, but once assimilating himself with this particular Viking faction, he finds that he is now part of a war they are engaged in with another Viking race.Yep, it's predator in the Viking age, berserker sci-fi played purely for entertainment and cheese sandwiches. Jesus Jimmy Caviezel brings the broody macho posturing, John Hurt the ham, while Ron Perlman picks up an easy pay check for growling a lot. It's still a lot of fun, though, the mixture of TV movie type production values mixing with a cheeky idea that sees the creation of a genuinely cool monster (effects not half bad at all). Good genre action for the undemanding genre faithful. 6/10

Well, I don't know if it can be called a "sci-fi" movie. You have at most 5 minutes of science fiction in the almost two hours that I lost by watching this movie. Also, it is not that exact historic if I put it that way. I'm not sure if these filmmakers know how real vikings looked like ? To recap, real vikings lived in Scandinavia, in subarctic climate (where it's damn cold). This movie shows us vikings in an unrealistic environment with volcanoes and lava, in an almost Mediterranean environment. The vikings walk with short sleeves, look like Americans, behave like Americans and have almost nothing in common with vikings, except few viking shields and a viking village. Come on, the filmmakers could do better than that. At least some effort would make the movie much more realistic. And I haven't seen one viking that is naturally blond or at least to look like one. Most of them have brown or black hair with some hair parts that are colored to blond. I mean everybody knows that the Scandinavian people are blond with pale skin (due to low levels of Melanin because they are not exposed to sun). It's because they live in winter lands :) Except these simple geographic and scientific facts that have nothing to do with this (not science, but more of a fiction) movie, it also lack creativity. It's full of plot holes. The story is undeveloped, so at least to say, and it has no twist at all. Action scenes have not much creativity in it and the whole idea of the movie ends where it has started: at the beginning. I won't recommend it to anyone.

In terms of realism, it perhaps lacks something in the depictions of the Vikings, but come on, this is a science fiction actioner. And as such it works very well. The characters have dimensions to them, the plot is straightforward, and in terms of the big set pieces this is done very well indeed. Jim Caviezel is excellent as the "human alien" Kainan, whose space ship crashes in 709 AD Norway, and unleashes the monster, the Moorwen, who destroyed his own people. The gradual acceptance of Kainan into the vikings' group forms the emotional heart of the story as he comes to care for the people he's landed among. This isn't Shakespeare, and it is a great deal better than many bigger budget and more highly advertised films (Beowulf itself, for instance). It is well worth checking it out on DVD. A good evening's entertainment.

Creative story line for a science fiction movie by combining the future and the past. There is a believable element in the opening scenes after the crash landing. The Outlander is obviously distressed and disoriented in a land that is far back in time. Loss of his weapon engages him at a physical level only with his captors, man to man. The Viking side of the story line has plenty of characters, fighting, and village details. But the village sets are only barely constructed. This is surprising given that most of the movie takes place with the Vikings. The flash backs to the future world have much more elaborate sets (well designed and complete). But overall this is an interesting and engaging movie. The characters are interesting, the story line progresses fairly quickly with quirks and turns, and the effects with the dragon are decent.