Movie Review: Outlander

Outlander is a movie about 3 things: vikings, dragons...and aliens. One of these things just doesn't belong. The story kicks off with an alien starship crashlanding in ancient Norway. The lone survivor, Kainan (Jim Caviezel) emerges and is almost immediately captured my a clan of Viking raiders. They believe that he was responsible your the recent mysterious destruction of several villages. In truth, the culprit is a alien dragon-like monster called the Morwen, the same creature that killed the rest of Kainan's crew and crashed his ship. When the man-eating Morwen sets it's sites of the Viking clan, Kainan must form an alliance to trap and destroy the beast before it devours them all.

Pros: You know what, forget it. Its pointless to do the standard pros and cons segments. You know the cons, and they may not even be cons, it all depends on how you look at it. If the idea of aliens and vikings in the same movie makes you roll your eyes, if your saying right now "this is the stupidest thing I've ever heard", then clearly this film is not for you. But if you're think "Aliens and vikings? AWESOME!!" then my friend, you will not be disappointed. You will either love this film or hate it, and I myself am firmly entrenched in the former catagory. When it comes to B-movie awesomeness, it does get much crazier, or much better, than this.

This is by nor means a B-movie cast, though. I'm still trying to figure out how they got John Hurt & Ron Pearlman. Well, I guess if they'll do Hellboy II, they'll do anything. Ron Pearlman tragically is not in this film for very long, but man, is he badass when he is. Y'know that part of the trailer where a bald, tattooed viking smashes a guy's head between two war hammers? Yeah, that's Ron. Our star, Jim Caviezel, is a very underrrated actor. Most people only know him from The Passion of the Christ, but not some of his lesser known films like The Count of Monte Cristo, I Am David, and The Thin Red Line. Sophia Myles is a certified hottie...oh, and a talented actress, and just as underrated as Caviezel. She like a likable version of Kate Winslet. The only actor I really didn't like was John Huston, who seems to be doing his best Eomer impersonation. Whoever played the Morwen wasn't creditted but he was born for the role (what else are you gonna do when you a giant glow-in-the-dark lizard).

For a budget of only $47 million, the film looks pretty good. Eragon didn't look any better on more than twice the money. While brought to life with obvious CGI, the Morwen looks pretty good, and definitely has a creative design. It's sort of a combination of a lizard, and tiger, and an angler fish. The fights are pretty cool too, I mean how can you go wrong when you give Ron Pearlman duel war hammers?

Few movies have a concept this bizarre. But somehow it all gels together. It's kinda like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They're both patently riduculous concepts that somehow work. This is something that must be seen in all it's sweet b-movie glory.

Overall, I give Outlander a Silver Anarchy Coin.

Click her to visit the official website for Outlander.