{"id":3862,"date":"2009-05-27T04:28:51","date_gmt":"2009-05-26T20:28:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=3862"},"modified":"2018-03-14T11:28:50","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T03:28:50","slug":"outlander","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2009\/05\/27\/outlander\/","title":{"rendered":"Outlander"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"blog-outlander\" Outlander<\/a> (2009)<\/em>. Matt was remarking the other morning that I don\u2019t have much time left to watch loud and noisy movies at home \u2013 Ling will make doubly sure of that when Hannah arrives in a fortnight LOL.<\/p>\n

I saw the trailers for Outlander<\/em>, and it looked liked it had all the trappings of a violent and gory sword-fest against a scary-looking monster with huge teeth. It does have a couple of small twists though: that the monster goes about rampaging a Viking village in a story that\u2019s set maybe in the 8th to 9th century, and their savior is a futuristic space-faring fellow who crash lands into a lake in the vicinity. Just to make things interesting, his sophisticated weaponary goes down with his ship and his whopping laser gun gets dropped early on. So he has to make do with only his wits and knowledge of modern tactics in taking down a human-gobbling critter.<\/p>\n

The film has strains of the Beowulf legend \u2013 made popular through two films last year \u2013 the Predator<\/a><\/em> movies, Ridley’s Scott Alien<\/em><\/a>, and The 13th Warrior<\/a><\/em> which in itself was inspired by the Beowulf legend. The production boasts of quite a quality cast, including James Caviezel \u2013 who did the title role for Mel Gibson\u2019s The Passion of the Christ<\/em><\/a> \u2013 John Hurt who dons a huge wig and beard for his role as the Viking King, Ron Perlman of the two successful Hellboy<\/a><\/em> movies, and the very lovely Sophia Myers whom I last saw in the medieval chick-flick Tristan + Isolde<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

In this sort of movie, one doesn\u2019t expect subtlety in the dialog, and Outlander<\/em> doesn\u2019t go out of the norm here. The spoken script is business-like, and the story takes a backseat to the well-staged action scenes. So, there isn\u2019t much acting going about here even with the talented cast. Just lots of grunting, hollering, sword-waving and stabbing, and running from the critter of course.<\/p>\n

The story itself contains no surprises either \u2013 you\u2019ve seen all the major plot developments before. No one believes the crash-landed Hero about The Beast \u2013> he gets beaten up and imprisoned \u2013> obligatory first scene where the critter kills a lot of people in the village \u2013> Vikings believe the Hero \u2013> and they try to fight the monster off, and eventually do defeat it though not before the body count racks up.<\/p>\n

And no surprises either on which of the major characters dies and lives by the end of the 2 hour film. Their fates are practically stamped on their foreheads the minute they get introduced.<\/p>\n

The fight scenes though are well-staged, and the critter is sufficiently scary enough with all the physical traits you expect from a thing that eats humans: violent disposition, huge teeth, drooling saliva, huge claws, and a wicked tail that decapitates a couple of unlucky fellows.<\/p>\n

So, it’s a watchable film, and definitely better than last year’s truly awful Pathfinder<\/em><\/a>, another Viking-esque show. Neither are for Ling though.:)<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Outlander (2009). Matt was remarking the other morning that I don\u2019t have much time left to watch loud and noisy movies at home \u2013 Ling will make doubly sure of that when Hannah arrives in a fortnight LOL. I saw<\/p>\n

Read More Outlander<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-home","category-entertainment","wpcat-6-id","wpcat-10-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3862\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}