The Outrage

Directed by Martin Ritt, The Outrage follows several characters, including Edward G. Robinson’s Con Man and William Shatner’s Preacher, as they attempt to discern whether or not a Mexican bandit (Paul Newman’s Juan Carrasco) attacked a married couple (Laurence Harvey’s Colonel Wakefield and Claire Bloom’s Nina Wakefield). Filmmaker Ritt, working from Michael Kanin’s screenplay, delivers a progressively interminable endeavor that slowly-but-surely squanders its positive attributes, including striking black-and-white cinematography by James Wong Howe, as the movie’s been hard-wired with an often eye-rollingly theatrical, stageplay-like atmosphere that essentially (and effectively) exacerbates its myriad of palpable problems – with the arms-length vibe perpetuated by performances that run the gamut from bland to downright awful. The latter is certainly reflected in Newman’s shockingly (and aggressively) misguided efforts as the picture’s larger-than-life villain, and there’s little doubt that the actor’s grating, annoying work here is indicative of The Outrage‘s wrongheaded sensibilities – which ensures that one’s patience is tested to an increasingly distressing extent (ie the whole thing, beyond a certain point, just feels endless). The final result is a mostly worthless production that contains few, if any, elements worth wholeheartedly embracing, which is a shame, undoubtedly, given the wealth of talented folks both in front of and behind the camera.

* out of ****