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It's a good film
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This film is another English great! It is actually typical England aswell, the chavs roam the streets beating victims but only getting a slap on the wrist back. A group headed by an ex comrad decide to take things into their own hands with a judge whose wife and child were murdered and the killer walked from court free, A typical Cockney office worker bullied at work and is fed up of not being able to stand up for himself and a few others who have been given a rough ride in life. They are all aided by a forensics cctv anaylizer who tips them off with targets such as murderers, rapists, paedo's etc and they are all taken out 1 by 1. The group then get given the name The Outlaws by the media and tehy are a sort of hero team by taking justice into their own hands.
Veteran-turned-vigilante Sean Bean and his Un-Merrie Men dish out justice in this state of the nation polemic Nick Love's previous films The Football Factory and The Business appealed to the 'Nuts' and 'Zoo'-reading male in their first flush of testosterone. Yet for all its flashes of brutalism, Outlaw feels defanged and debooted, reflecting Love's drift into middle-age, with middle-class concerns. As he says of the film, "It could have had the lads treatment (but) I'm getting older. I think it's made in a more mature way." And with age, comes, well, not so much maturity, responsibility, or experience, as fear. Having titillated his audience with terrace thuggery and dispatches from the Costa Del Crime, Love appears concerned that his audience may have taken his flirtation with criminality seriously. What to do? Well, there's only one sort of language these horrible hoodies understand. Beat them up! That's the position former paratrooper Danny Bryant (Bean) adopts on returning from a tour of Iraq, emotionally wounded by a war nobody wanted and appalled by the state of the country he left behind. "It's almost worse here" he exclaims. "They go around wrecking lives and when they get caught they get a slap on the wrist."Read full review
Outlaw is no easy film, with no easy answers. The latest from writer/director Nick Love, previously behind The Football Factory and The Business, it tells the story of a Britain overrun with crime, with no one willing to stand up to it. Until, that is, a group of people--led by Sean Bean’s Bryant--decide to effectively take matters into their own hands. And so, with each of this group having their own reasons for their actions, they start to exact a form of revenge on the those who have wronged them, laying the scene for an interesting vigilante crime-thriller. Amidst a fair cavalcade of at-times quite brutal violence, Outlaw has a real feeling and message at the heart of it. But you’d be hard pushed to say that the message is well handled, or that it’s the main reason for watching the film. Instead, the strengths are some of the performances (Bean is joined by the likes of Bob Hoskins, Lennie James and Dannie Dyer) and the increasingly confident direction from Love. At times it’s blistering to watch, no matter how uncomfortable it makes you feel. Ultimately, though, Outlaw, in spite of its strengths, is a mixed bag, yet one with plenty to recommend it. It’s a well-made, diverting film, albeit not one for the squeamish, and while it’s got its fair share of flaws, you’re unlikely to be disappointed by it.Read full review
Nick Love's new film has been billed as 'The Football Factory with guns', which is selling it a bit short. Fans of Love's crunchily violent geezer pleasers won't be disappointed though, as a group of disaffected/grieving/psychotic men go Robin Hoodie on organised criminals and corrupt police. However, as technically impressive and (mostly) well-acted as the film is, the moral ambiguity of the main players and their plight could leave the audience out in the cold. Outlaw quickly draws several trailing story threads around Sean Bean's angry ex-squaddie, a man for whom serving his morally ailing country (it's all Blair's fault, apparently) has left him with little to do but unite, among others, Danny Dyer's put-upon city boy, Lennie James' grieving barrister and Sean Harris' psychotic security guard. Together, they set out to make their own violent stand against drug dealers, "paedos" and in particular, the crime boss responsible for murdering James' wife. Along the way, they're aided by Bob Hoskins' weary copper, and while they're a big hit with the public, they're ill-equipped and hopelessly outnumbered - from their first pub brawl to the inevitable final shoot-out. "FEELS LIKE A MISSED OPPORTUNITY" While there's no doubting Love's directing ability, Outlaw works much better as a straight-up crime thriller than an angry diatribe on the state of the nation. Far from exploring the precarious moral high ground taken by Bean and co, the film settles for a simplistic smaller picture, complete with one-dimensional bad guys and none-too-subtle posturing, which might leave you with something to talk about, but very little to sympathise with. Still, while this feels like a missed opportunity, it could be worse, it could have been The Football Factory - with guns.Read full review
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