The Outsider

source: The Outsider

This movie is unbelievable from every aspect I know. Culturally unbelievable, cinematically unbelievable, story-line is unbelievable. Every good movie lends to it's audience tokens of buy in, critically they call it the, "suspension of disbelief." Perfect movies keep tally near or close to zero, that is, for every instance they ask you to believe the story that is being told they trump up some reason for you to believe it. If the reason they give is too much of a stretch, your suspension of disbelief is broken. Little buy in's and little rewards lend itself towards a huge buy in and a huge reward. This is why we but in to shawshank redemption and why we don't buy into sharknado. In this movie, they just don't care. I am going to give you a list of buy in's that failed, and why I give this movie a 1/10 The movie is called the outsider, so you have to get me from white guy in japan to yakuza member. -1 A military man ends up in prison, no clue why, movie never tells -1 Prisoner saves yakuza members life while in prision -1 Yakuza member owes a debt of honor to white guy for saving his life +1 After getting out of jail, yakuza family employs strange white guy -1 White guy bludgeons another white guy to near death for yakuza family, without cause -1 White guy gets jumped into yakuza gang because he was willing to cut off 2 of his fingers. -1 White guy raises no reaction from yakuza member for banging his sister -1 White guy is allowed to live and work with yakuza while suspicion of a double agent exists - 1 When a yakuza family ensares the remains of a weaker yakuza family, all of the members are spared by the traitor except the head of the family -1 White guy is allowed to enact revenge on the traitor in the midst of the other family -1 All of these things are given without reason and without support from historical culture, known culture, or even make believe culture. The action scenes are decent. Leto is true to his part. But the entire thing is so loosely connected I had to force myself to keep watching. Because despite this being a movie, even the movie forced itself to keep believing itself when there were clear reasons to end leto's journey 20 min's in....and they persisted till the end of the movie.

Yeah, I think like most of the other reviews I'm in agreement that this isn't bad, but it's not really that good either, just pretty meh. Technically, writing, acting, etc. all could have been a lot better. It's a pretty weak and uninteresting story with weak and uninteresting characters that wasn't filmed all that well. More like something you'd expect from first year film students. The underpinnings are all there but they fail to come together and make what could have been a good crime drama.

If you like Japanese Yakuza/Gangster films, this is practically a must see. Some of the other reviews here are nonsense and should be ignored. Jared Leto did a superb job. People say that he was expressionless, but the point there is the other gangsters are never able to rattle him, no matter what. It makes him incredibly effective, and interesting because you never can gauge how he will react to a situation, but then he usually winds up doing the most "gangster" thing possible. The movie doesn't have a lot of dialogue, and some reviews said the dialogue was stupid - really that was intentional because the Japanese speaking gangsters did not speak English well, or even want to speak English. So the things they said in English sometimes sounded off the way someone whose native language was not English would be. The movie was very well paced and I just didn't want it to end. The only possible criticism I would have is this movie probably plays to some Japanese stereotypes, and also the fact that an American comes over there like Rambo to join the Yakuza was a bit forced - but I think this movie plays homage to some of the classic gangster movies, and so it's all appropriate in that context.

The story is a fairly by the numbers mafia drama in terms of structure but,it is very well executed. The sense of high stakes is always present trough the whole film, every action has a consequence. As the script has no unnecessary filler plots, it keeps the story moving at a prefect pace. The main themes of the movie are brotherhood and revenge, and even if the characters ar not too deep, you get to know them enough to care for them in dangerous situations and you feel some empathy for the main character in his struggle ro fit into a violent world that does not treat him as an equal Nick is not a hero or a good person at all but he shows enough principles for the audience to understand his perspective. Is this movie unique? Not at all but it more than a time waster that deserves your attention.

I have to agree with some of the other reviewers on here... the story was left wanting. It could have been so much better but just lacked the character development and the dialogue it needed to be great. It left me feeling a bit deflated in the end. Jared Leto is awful in this film, not his finest hour... but what has been? Yet another Netflix film not worth bothering about.

It's hard when the movie's main flaw is the main character. Nick is supposed to be this quiet and intense guy, but inconsistencies in both the writing and acting keeps this movie from being great. I like the concept. It's not an all-out action movie, more of a character study with bursts of violence. My kind of movie. The 50's Osaka setting, the atmosphere, it's good. But the camera work doesn't take full advantage of the setting, and shots could've been better framed, better movement. The small budget shows. The audio mixing was acceptable but not great. In better hands, this movie would've been great. I'm not saying it's terrible, I enjoyed it. There wasn't any part of the movie where I got bored, I was engaged throughout. But at the same time, throughout the movie, I there were points where I was aware of how things could've been better. I like Netflix doing unconventional stuff. But rather than make a lot of them, give them the budget they deserve to make them great.

Before watching the movie I looked for any kind of Internet reviews, as I usually do, and what I found kind of surprised me, since they were VERY low ratings, like Metacritic's. It was disappointing at first, because I was really looking foward to watching it, but since I love oriental/yakuza themed movies and had nothing better to do anyways, I decided to give it a chance. For starters, I enjoyed it a lot! It's not by any means a masterpiece, but it was a very solid movie with good casting and good plot. If you are into the japanese culture as I am, I can guarantee you are going to have a good time as well. Maybe because my expectations were set very low (by the reviews and ratings) I ended up enjoying it more than I thought I would. The acting is very convincing and even though Jared Leto's character doesn't talk much, I believe it was the author intention to give him this blank and mysterious background. The other, japanese, characters are also very well portrayed, but not much development is given into them. The post WW-II Japan's atmosphere is amazing, and it does give you a feeling about the underground yakuza world at the time. For what I think could have been better, the pacing was a bit too slow at times and the story is VERY predictable once you figure out who the bad guy is. It could also have developed a bit better our main protagonist, I understand he's supposed to be mysterious, but almost NOTHING is given to us about his background or anything that could explain why he acts the way he does throught the movie (maybe a sequel exploring it, who knows?). Nonetheless, it was a good movie and I strongly advise you ignore the critics and go watch it for yourself and, hopefully, help spreading the word afterwards too!

2 hours of..........nothing much really Sets looked great, shame about the lack of plot that was dragged out far too long.