Outlaw

With an increasingly convoluted judicial system, along with privacy and profiling laws that protect criminals to a far greater degree than the innocent, given that the innocent have nothing to hide and are not dressed and behaving in a manner that would draw negative attention, it is only inevitable that victimized parties would resort to more pragmatic and directly reactionary modes of justice. Outlaw looks to explore the psychology behind what might lead a man to take the law into his own hands by creating various archetypes and stereotypical conflicts, and blowing them up into a violent template. While the premise is interesting, the film suffers from severe structural integrity issues that include everything from sloppy editing to distracting camera work to a story that’s often incoherent and unable to build any sort of tension or ire, as progression and characterizations are almost non-existent. The paper-thin plot essentially follows a posse of outlaws that are tired of the government and police’s inability to properly punish criminals. As a result, ex-soldier Danny Bryant (Sean Bean), office worker Gene Dekker (Danny Dyer), barrister Cedric Monroe (Lennie James), detective Walter Lewis (Bob Hoskins) and a few others decide to dish out their own more aggressive means of justice. The result involves a great deal of violence against criminals, occasional moral crises and of course, insurrection. The DVD includes "making of” and "Rave & the Riot” featurettes that examine each character, key scenes and the entire production from the beginning through to the test screenings, all with a great deal of profanity. Also riddled with crudity is the commentary with Danny Dyer and Nick Love, where they endlessly bitch about how audience members were unable to appreciate the film because they didn’t understand it and were not willing to think. Realistically, however, it was individual ability to interpret and assess that likely led to much of the negative publicity that the film received. Also included are deleted scenes, interviews with background actors and video diaries.