Outcast which stars Hayden Christensen and Nicolas Cage is a movie set in Medieval China. Cage’s character Gallain starts out a a type of consciousness adviser for Christensen’s character Jacob. While Gallain sees what they are doing as cruel and wrong, Jacob sees it all as an act of God and that they are God’s warriors. After Jacob releases Gallain from his duties, the two go their separate ways. Jacob gets involved in protecting a prince and princess and tries to keep them alive throughout the film.
Well, there’s some good news and bad news. The film isn’t all that bad but it isn’t good either.
Both Nicolas Cage and Hayden Christensen have accents in the movie, which to most people may already sound like a recipe for disaster. The story was mediocre at best. You’ve seen it done before and most likely better. The action was okay and there was a good amount of it in the film. That was about the only highlight of the film. There were good spurts of action throughout the film.
One thing about the film is that Nicolas Cage’s screen time was maybe about 15 minutes at most. Since Nicolas Cage is on the box art and poster for the film, I assumed that he would be in a good amount of the film but he wasn’t. Now I’m not saying that he dies or doesn’t die in the film but if the actor is on the poster for the film, you would think the director and writers would include that actor in a lot of scenes. His role seemed to be a little more than what would be considered a cameo. When Nic Cage is in the film, it’s really hard to get past his accent. I think the only accent that he can pull off and that he keeps on point, is the southern accent. So not having enough Nicolas Cage and having him in the film with an accent is almost a no win situation.
The film was more of a Hayden Christensen show. Christensen plays a silent and mysterious type of warrior. Which works for the most part since some people still haven’t gotten over the whole Star Wars prequels thing. Though I do have to say, there are a few parts that will remind you of Anakin Skywalker. Christensen’s dialogue in this film is kept minimal with quite a bit of one liners. He doesn’t make any speeches or lectures. Just short, simple and to the point. So that works in his favor.
If you are a fan of medieval sword fights, then you may enjoy this film. For everyone else, I’m not sure there’s enough that would keep you interested in the film.