| American Outlaws |
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| 1/2 |
| Rating: Mediocre Distributor: Warner Brotheres Release Date: August Running Length: 1 hour, 34 minutes MPAA Rating: PG-13 Genres: Western, Action, Romance Director: Les Mayfield Cast: Colin Farrell, Scott Caan, Ali Larter, Timothy Dalton, Will McCormack, Kathy Bates, Gabriel Macht, and Gregory Smith. |
| picture above from www.tnmc.org/gnews/archive/pics/amout01.jpg |
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| Plot: Jesse James (Colin Farrell) and his friends from his farming town return to the South, from The Civil War. They find destruction and insecurity. A railroad company decides they want to build a railroad through the farmers' land. The farmers refuse to sell their land so the railroad can be built, and the company threatens them in return. James and his friends have seen too much, and after the incident they begin a gang to disrupt the making of the railroad. |
| Critique: American Outlaws is devoid of creativity, and has no new ideas to bring to its genre or film itself. The script is lazily written; the conflicts are tired, and the dialogue is astonishingly poor. The story is neither interesting, nor engrossing. The direction is unimpressive, as the film has no guide. The picture flails around attempting to find a purpose. Additionally, the whole cast delivers terrible performances. Indeed, the film has very few proven actors, and it is safe to say that experience usually goes a long way. Scott Caan, and Ali Larter put out terrible performances, but not every cast member is weak. Timothy Dalton is amusing, and provides good acting in many sequences. After his performance in Tigerland, Colin Farrell has proven himself to be a very talented actor. However, he displays nothing special in this film. Indeed, he may have had little incentive to perform well for three reasons. He could rest on his critical acclaim in Tigerland, and he has several bigger, more ambitious films coming in the next year. Perhaps most importantly, the script was not intriguing, and Farrell may have assumed that he could give less of an effort, and still do what the script asked of him. American Outlaws has some positive moments. There are a few witty scenes, and the film is occasionally entertaining in its low grade silliness. However, its flaws, and tedious sections easily surpass its positive qualities. The film is a loss cause from the beginning, when it becomes obvious the film never wants to be more than a forgettable genre film. It's not rare for a very unambitious film to be entertaining, but in order to be worthwhile the film has to have a strong positive aspect. Generally, the craftsmanship of the film has to be good, or the story has to have some compelling concepts. 'Outlaws' has no strong positive aspect. American Outlaws is a disaster, and it is an example of poor filmmaking. The acting is predominantly weak, and the script is terrible. I do not recommend American Outlaws, an uninteresting film. review by supernothingman |