The Outsider

The Outsider details the chaos and violence that ensues after the son (Kaiwi Lyman’s James) of a small-town marshal (Trace Adkins’ Walker) kills the loved one of a local railroad worker (Jon Foo’s Jing Phang), with Walker and a down-on-his-luck tracker (Sean Patrick Flanery’s Chris King) setting out to find Jing before he can get his hands on the admittedly-sleazy James. Filmmaker Timothy Woodward Jr, working from Sean Ryan’s screenplay, delivers a decent Western that benefits substantially from a refreshingly pared-down narrative and an appreciatively brisk running time, as the movie boasts a fairly difficult-to-resist revenge-based storyline anchored by a series of visceral fight sequences and a strong selection of performances – with, in terms of the latter, Foo’s charismatic work as the single-minded protagonist certainly standing as an ongoing highlight. It’s just as clear, however, that Woodward Jr’s decision to bathe a large chunk of the proceedings in murky darkness proves rather problematic (to put it mildly), as the impact of certain key sequences is severely diminished by the viewer’s inability to wholeheartedly discern just what’s happening – with this especially true of the rainy, often indecipherable climactic battle on the streets of the aforementioned small town. Still, The Outsider generally comes off as a tough little Western that accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do (and certainly feels like an almost prototypical example of the genre).

**1/2 out of ****