Outlaw

Was intrigued by the trailer of this, the latest offering from Football Factory's director Nick Love. Although interesting at times, ultimately the film does not live up to its trailer or the interesting subject material.

Focusing on a diverse gang of Brits hacked off with the British justice system who set up an avenging vigilante type band, the film features a number of famous Brit actors, not least Bob Hoskins and Sean Bean. It's an interesting idea and the first half an hour or so works very well but, unfortunately, the direction and editing is poorly handled and the second half of the film feels like it's been hacked together by a reception class and flows poorly. An interesting premise ends up disintegrating into a conspiracy film crossed with cliched shootouts involving criminals vs cops. The ending restores a little bit of authority, but not much.

The characters are generally well thought out and are certainly not one dimensional, although Bean and Hoskins could be accused of sleepwalking at times and their performances aren't particularly challenging. The star of the show is Danny Dyer.

I actually really like Dyer, he has a particular quality about him which invests his characters with likability, depth and subtlety (much more than you might think). He is on fine form here and I genuinely think he's one of the more promising Brit actors and I think he has a lot more about him than the likes of Jude Law, although I suspect that assertion will be controversial to say the least. Dyer might not have the classical training and the leading-man looks but he speaks to me more and I find his performances easy to get involved with. He might be in with a shout on my lists for this year, although I suspect Ruffalo et al in Zodiac might have put paid to that.

Anyway, this is certainly not an awful film and it wasn't a difficult watch. It's just that it could have been so much more. A great film is waiting to be made on this material but it isn't this. It's also very right wing in it's attitude to social justice and I found that, in particular, very hard to swallow, although I tried to keep it separate from judging the film purely as a film.

C+