Outlaw (2007)

This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

..but you already knew that because that's the way it plays in all of Sean's moviesOK...it wasn't as bad as some say but certainly not as good as others opined. Let's just say it could have been better.Some good patches but rough and uneven most of the film.Script was weak tea despite a good core of actors. although it's not a real "vigilante" movie like a ultra violent Hollywood blood spilling satanic ritual gore fest, there should have been more character development to fill the monotonous and dumb down dialogue exchange between the lads.a 5.5 but with more effort, easily could have jumped up to a 7.0

Sgt. Danny Bryant comes home from a tour of duty in Iraq to find that things aren't what they once were. A gang of thugs has moved into the neighbourhood, and his wife is with another man. Gene Dekker, is beaten up by thugs, and he sets out to get revenge on the men. Terence Manning, a gangster of London's underworld, is currently on trial, with lawyer Cedric Munroe heading the prosecution's legal team. Manning's men attack both Munroe's wife, and persuade Munroe's bodyguard Walter not to intervene. The men from an alliance, and set out to even the score against those who wronged them, though their contempt for the law puts them outside the lines of conventional justice.....Yes, it's a trashy, exploitative movie, but its one of my all time favourite guilty pleasures. And it's because its starts off silly, goes a little cuckoo in the middle, and then, the third act is just beyond, beyond bonkers.But Love is one of this directors that doesn't really do anything other than over the top British bulldog B-movies. And they are all full of another word beginning with B, but with his films, you can just switch off, and forget everything else for ninety or so minutes.The cast are all fine, and do what you would expect them all to do in films like this. Bean meets all the rest of the group whilst really angry, and this anger makes them angry, and Bob Hoskins is there to overlook everything.Imagine The Avengers after fifteen pints of strong Lager, and Pie and Chips?, then this is your movie.It's pretty visceral stuff, the camera work tries to make it look realistic, but it looks like it must have been cold on the day.To say the third act is beyond ridiculous is an understatement, but by the time it arrives, you couldn't care less.If you like this type of film, its a riot,if you don't, fair enough.

Here we go,here we go,here we go...it all kicks off when psycho Northern para (Mr S.Bean - trying hard not to laugh)gets among the Cockneys(chirpy as personified by Mr D.Dyer or miserable as personified by Mr B.Hoskins)and stirs 'em up with his Northern grit and turns them into a bloodthirsty lynch mob in about two minutes flat.A little longer in the case of the high - profile defence barrister who wants to avenge his murdered wife and child (the way high - profile defence barristers do). Even by the standards of Britcrim films,"Outlaw" is pretty dreadful. It looks as if it has been shot through a pair of polaroid sunglasses,the jerky "gritty" camera work is severely overdone and the villains are about as menacing as my Aunt Peggy.It takes more than being bald and swearing a lot to make a real hard man. Mr Hoskins plays a copper who after 25 years in the job gets a posting driving a Lawyer about then moans....most coppers I knew would have been bloody delighted after a quarter of a century in the front line to get a break for the last few years..but our Bob is gung - ho to the end which isn't long in coming when his desire to put villains away puts him in the path of a bent senior officer who is in the pay of uber crim Manning,a sort of Moriarty figure for the 21st century,sitting in the middle of a web of crime covering all of London.Yeah,right. Clearly not believers in the Eastern adage "Revenge is a dish best tasted cold",Mr Bean and his Cockney cohorts set about righting a few wrongs and some of them soon get the taste for cold - blooded sadistic mega violence which of course makes them no better than their victims (pretty profound stuff,eh?) and in the end it all goes tits up for them when they're cornered like the rats they are by Old Bill who cold bloodedly put them down like the dogs they are etc etc etc....even the nice defence counsel after he has thrown his gun away and surrendered. Don't mess with the Met seems to be the message here. There is a not very surprising surprise ending and we can all go home remembering not to make eye contact with any bald - headed Cockneys we might encounter on the way.And watch out for that smelly dosser - he might be ex Special Forces and know 25 different ways to kill you.although in my experience one is all it takes.

OUTLAW must be one the most deeply misunderstood movies iv encountered, not one single reviewer here has mentioned the whole point of the film is a modern day Robbin hood parable a deeply cynical and sarcastic film. Sean Bean plays the Robbin hood a man trained to kill by the state who has returned home from fighting an unwinnable war in Afghanistan to find no thanks no heroes homecoming just mocked and shut out of society he like all too many of British war vets winds up living out of a bag and ends up in a bed an breakfast where he begins to recruit his band of similarly merry men and they all head off to their sharewood forest to take on the establishment. Basiclly the film is asking what if robin hood was real and happened in todays society ? I think after the recent Raul Moats case here in england the film and the characters make a lot more "sense" certainly not a classic and not without its problems but worth a look all the same.