Outcast, a 2014 Chinese-American-Canadian film directed by Nick Powell, can be succinctly summarized in two words: a mess.
I watched this film because of its thumbnail on Netflix. Said thumbnail showed Nicolas Cage with the most glorious mane he’s sported outside of Con Air, and I wanted to know what exactly his character did in this film to deserve being blessed with such an epic head of hair. The answer is: not a whole lot.
Outcast is the story of a guy named Jacob (played by Hayden Christensen – a surprise, to be sure, but sadly not a welcome one), who, following a brief stint as a bit of a psychotic murderer in Arabia during the Crusades, ends up in China and pretty much single-handedly restores the rightful ruler to the throne. Yep, one white boy really does all that – and he doesn’t even have Force-powers this time.
The majority of Outcast involves Jacob trying to keep Prince Zhao (Bill Su Jiahang), the rightful heir to the throne, and his guardian older sister, Princess Lian (Liu Yifei), safe from those who wish them dead. Jacob’s doing all of this apparently to try and atone for the atrocities he committed during the Crusades, which caused his friend and mentor, Gallain (Nicolas Cage), to lose respect for him. Speaking of Gallain, the group meet up with him near the end of the film, and find that he has fully entrenched himself in Chinese culture and become known as the “White Ghost”. Gallain helps Jacob, Zhao and Lian to defeat the evil Prince Shing (Andy On), who wrongfully killed his father to become Emperor and has been trying to wipe out any threats to his rule ever since.
Along the way there’s some attempts at character development: Jacob has become an opium addict as a response to his dark past, but there isn’t any real exploration of his grief or regret. Lian pretty much instantly glosses over any of the bad things he’s done and falls in love with him as well (of course). It could be because he’s helping her and her brother out, but mainly, I think, it’s because she saw him with his shirt off one time (I have to assume it’s that, because the film gives us no indication that they have any sort of romantic chemistry or shared personality traits that would make them compatible as a couple).
The story of Outcast is stupid and boring, as are its characters. The top-billed cast member is Nicolas Cage, despite him being little more than a secondary character at best. Cage is exactly as you’d expect him to be in any film of his that came out post-Adaptation. He’s channeling the same manic energy for every single role he’s in now, regardless of if it even really needs it (oh, who am I kidding? Of course it does! It’s the reason we’re still watching his stuff, and it’s the reason I watched this film in the first place).
Now, when it comes to Hayden Christensen, on the other hand, I’m not going to mince words. His performance in this film is bad. People complain that his turn in the Star Wars prequels was the worst thing he’s ever done, but I think those people would be singing his praises to high heaven for his part in those films if they’d seen even five minutes of this one (I, for one, also think it’s time to critically re-evaluate the prequel trilogy as a whole – but more on that another time).
The thing that makes Christensen’s performance in this film so bad is his weird accent, for the most part. His character, Jacob (who I didn’t know the name of for the entire length of the film and only found out when I looked up the credits online, so that’s probably not a good thing), is supposed to be Scottish. However, based on the accent, there is absolutely no way you’d know that. I only know it because I looked up the film on IMDB, and one of the three pieces of trivia about the film was that Hayden Christensen’s character was Scottish, and that he apparently practiced the constant fainting of his character by going on a week-long pub crawl in Glasgow (which doesn’t seem true, but who knows).
The accent he does stays mostly in the “badly done Englishman” category with constant lapses back into Canadian, and on the whole it’s very distracting and makes it impossible to take anything he says seriously – although it doesn’t help that all of his lines sound like they were written by someone trying their hardest to distill the awkwardness of the fireplace conversation in Attack of the Clones into an entire feature-length film (and no, I’m not going to stop making Star Wars jokes in this review). Nobody in this bloody thing has consistent accents anyway, so why not just let him be Canadian – at this point, who cares?
In terms of the story, the white saviour theme runs strong with this one, as evil an influence as the Dark Side of the Force. It’s clear to see why China absolutely hated it and refused to give it a DVD release after an initially disastrous screening in Hong Kong. Why couldn’t the two male leads be Chinese? It would have made so much more sense, and there are so many fantastic young Chinese actors that would have done a much better job in the roles. Then the film could have focussed solely on the plot involving the overthrow of Prince Shing and ditched the stupid (and confusing) Crusades part. You can’t even argue that Cage and Christensen were cast to appeal to Western audiences, because let’s face it, who was flocking to the cinema in 2014 to see any films that they were in?
There’s even a sequence where it seems like Zhao will be trained up to then defeat his rival Shing at the end of the film. Jacob teaches him how to fire a bow properly, just like Gallain taught him as a child. On paper, this could have made for good storytelling – Jacob overcomes some of the sins of his past by helping a new generation of warrior, finally using his combat skills for good instead of bad. And, thanks to Jacob’s training, Zhao is the one who is able to finish the fight against Shing, undoing at least some of the “white saviour” damage by having an actual Chinese character save the fate of China. They even go so far as to make the training Jacob gives Zhao mirror the training he himself got from Gallain, setting up the idea that even though Jacob originally used the skills taught to him by Gallain for a bad purpose, when he teaches those same skills to Zhao, things might be different.
It doesn’t work out that way, though. Of course it doesn’t. Jacob does teach Zhao archery, but like so many other things in this infernal film, it’s essentially pointless. You could say it does a little bit for his character, stripping away some of the general asshole-ish nature of his character by showing him doing something kinder than ramming a sword through someone’s throat every other second, but poor Zhao never gets his heroic moment. At the end of the film when Shing is defeated, surprising absolutely nobody, it’s the two white characters that fight the battle.
Alright, I’ve trashed discussed the plot and the characters thoroughly, but let’s touch on how this film has actually been directed. It was the debut directorial effort of Powell, and the only thing he’s directed since is a flick called Primal – also starring Nicolas Cage, and also terribly received. For the most part, the film just doesn’t look good. It’s either awash in an orange glow or a filter that looks like it was applied with an iPhone app. The whole thing has the constant feel of a historical re-enactment in a documentary; it’s lacking the polish of a proper theatrical release.
The sets aren’t too bad, but each new place tends to just blend into one of two locations: inside a building or outside. There isn’t enough to distinguish the different places apart, and there’s no scenery that’s particularly breath-taking.
The same can be said about the costumes – nothing too terrible, but nothing spectacular either. The wigs (including Nicolas Cage’s one) are all pretty bad. Remember that awful wig Storm wore in the first X-Men film? Or all of the awful wigs that every character in the Twilight franchise wore? Well the wigs in this film are worse than all of those for the simple fact that they never even seem to be properly attached to the actor’s heads! Zhao’s wig always seems like it’s trying to levitate off of his head, leaving his short crop completely visible underneath. And then Gallain’s magnificent mane, the reason I wanted to watch this film in the first place, pretty much just falls straight off when he’s lying on the ground dying at the end of the film (spoilers, I guess, but trust me, you don’t want to watch this).
Now, I don’t want to write nothing but criticism, because despite what you’ve read so far, this isn’t the worst film I’ve ever seen in my life (that honour probably goes to The Fly II, at this point). There are some quite well-choreographed fight sequences, which makes sense given Powell’s previous work as a stunt choreographer. The fights are fast-paced and interesting, but it’s a shame that the camerawork on them can be most generously described as “frantic”. The two actors who do the best stunt work are Andy On (which makes sense, considering he’s trained in martial arts) and Hayden Christensen (which also makes sense, considering all the training he got on the last two Star Wars prequels).
And well, that’s probably it. I can safely say I’ve learned my lesson, and will never watch a film on Netflix based solely on a thumbnail ever again. Oh, and should you watch Outcast? No. Absolutely not.
BEST BITS
- Nicolas Cage just stealing every scene he’s in. In one scene he’s just randomly holding a snake and stroking it against his beard. You love to see it.
- Some of the fight sequences genuinely had me thinking “hey, that’s pretty good.”
WORST BITS
- The whole “white saviour” thing. Jacob’s time in the Crusades had barely any impact on this story. The lead role should have been played by a Chinese actor.
- Hayden Christensen’s abominable accent. Nicolas Cage’s isn’t much better, but his over-acting distracts from it better than Christensen’s under-acting.
FINAL RATING: 4/10
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