FilmSnobReviews

Title: The Outsider
MPAA Rating: TV-MA
Director: Martin Zandvliet
Starring: Jared Leto, Tadanobu Asano, Kippei Shîna
Runtime: 2 hrs

What It Is: When an American prisoner in a Japanese prison named Nick (Leto) helps a yakuza bosses son get out of said prison this Yakuza, named Kiyoshi (Asano) brings Nick into the fold but as a gyujin or “outsider” it’s hard for him to gain the confidence of the other within the family. He’ll do so with a can-do attitude and a willingness to do whatever is asked of him in a timely an efficient manner.

What We Think: This is a really bland and terrible film. Narratively it’s flat and does nothing new to its well-worn genre. Jared Leto tries to outact the material and he just can’t do it. There’s too much easy fruit being picked here. Nick’s character arc is as predictable as anything. The thing about that is it’s boring even going through the predicable nature. I’d say it’s disappointing except that it really isn’t. Instead what it is is an expectedly bad film once again for Netflix. While there are some films coming up by them that feature better performances and better writing this instead falls in line with the other awful films in Netflix’ canon.

Our Grade: D, A terrible feature and one that shows that Leto’s newest album with his band 30 Seconds to Mars isn’t his only misstep in 2018. To me, it came off as Leto doing Tom Hardy except not as actually tough or interesting. No, this instead just seemed like poor writing, poor delivery from an uninspired director. A rare misstep for Zandvliet who’s proven time and again to be quite reliable behind the lens. I do suppose they can’t all be winners. A disappointing follow up to the brilliant Land of Mine.