I recently saw, "Outlander" starring Jim Caviezel, Sophia Myles, Jack Huston, Ron Perlman, and John Hurt. Written and directed by Howard McCain. It is the story of an "alien" who crash lands on earth in the time of Vikings, he hunts down the monster-creature that killed his family, all the while helping a Viking tribe continue their way of life.
Howard McCain is not well known for any sort of work, he does have better experience writing movies such as Outlander, Underworld 3: Rise of the Lycans, and the remake of Conan. This is his biggest movie to direct and his first since a TV directing job back in 1998. I'm not sure if McCain was the one who came up with the original idea for this movie, but the story is good-the writing is not. The directing could be better.
Jim Caviezel, is not the greatest actor, he-I believe-will always be known as Jesus Christ, for his role in Passion of the Christ. But in this movie he plays the alien who crash lands on earth. He tries to play the role of a very rough and tough far beyond Viking skill level, but comes off as a phony, he tries to hard to play a tough guy.
The one scene that I will always remember from this movie is one of the first scenes with Sophia Myles, it is dark and brooding atmosphere (even though it is outside in the middle of the day) he red hair stands out, but even in the contrast of bad lighting and bright hair stands her gorgeous blue eyes. Besides her looks she doesn't show anything worth remembering in this movie.
Ron Perlman and John Hurt, who are both usually pretty good (somewhat) big name actors don't show much in this movie. They don't have very many scenes in this movie nor do they have anything to do besides be the evil bad guy who is an idiot or the mentoring over acting fool.
Jack Huston showed the most promise, he was the one to discover Jim Caveziel's character, he transformed from a broody I want to kick your butt to the friendly but tough side kick.
In all, as I said before the story had a good concept, the writing lacked a lot, it could have gone through a few more rewrites, but when the director is the writing we don't always get that-look at M.Night Shyamalan's recent movies. I was sorely disappointed, at first I thought this was going to be a love/action story with the first meeting of Sophia Myles and Jim Caveizel. Then I thought Caveizel was going to help one tribe fight against another. Early on we learn that he is after a creature, but I thought for the longest time he was joking. It isn't until about 52 mibutes in when we see the creature for the first time.
This movie was a mix of other movie types including - Alien vs. Predator, The 13th Warrior, Beowulf, and many more.
On my usual scale of 5, this gets a pitiful...1.
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