Outlander

In my endless quest to find a movie comparable to the action and cheese factor of one of my favorite SciFi movies Doom, I have found many frogs. Thinking this one no different than all the others, I put aside my expectations and got to work watching Outlander, a movie I had never heard of. With a slow start and questionable effects akin to the SciFi channel, I was hesitant to give it a chance. Jim Caviezel gave his lines like someone who just woke up from a nap, and at one point the speed button was hit to make it appear as though he was running faster. Thinking this a big fat stinker, I began to truly enjoy this mess.

The movie opens with a space craft rocketing for earth and crashing into a lake. Escaping the wreckage and crawling to land is a space dude played by the guy who was Jesus in that movie by Mel Gibson. After consulting his space computer he finds he is in Norway in 709AD and is smack in the middle of Viking town. He puts a suction cup to his eye and rapidly learns the Norse language which sound a hell of a lot like English. His first spoken word is “fuck,” so I knew that I was going to enjoy this.

Picking up his fancy gun, he does a few gay ass tricks with it and heads off to the woods in search of the shit that will shortly be hitting the fan. He comes across a village in destruction, blood and claw marks are everywhere but no bodies are left. A passing Viking from a neighboring tribe takes him for the one who destroyed the village all by himself and drags him back to his place where we learn the strangers name is not “The-guy-who-played-Jesus-that-one-time” but is Kainan, and he hails from an “Island in the North”. To add a proverbial cherry on top, he explains that he is hunting a dragon that had stowed away on his ship when he was happened upon. No one believes him obviously and he gets beaten up.

No worries, the very impressive dragon makes its appearance at the colony and wreaks some havoc on those fur wearing newly converted dragon believers. Well, Kainan is welcomed into the fold and the king’s daughter who’s a real pistol, takes a shine to him. Eventually there is nothing left to do but to go hunt that bitch down, so being a real kick ass astronaut, Kainan leads the soldiers into the mouth of darkness to eradicate this little problem. Oh, and did I forget to mention that Ron Perlman is in this? For just a few scenes but I love him just the same.

Not the pinnacle of movie making, but it had an interesting feel being a Science Fiction story in a medieval world. It oddly reminded me of a video game called Too Human which also took a look at Norse history with an intergalactic backdrop. I was not disappointed with Outlander, but it did take the first 15 minutes to get over the way Caviezel gave his lines, and to really revel in the action. The dragon effects did not disappoint, nor did the blood splatters that occasionally would fall on the camera lens, man I love me some gore.