Outlaw King is the Braveheart Sequel clearly Netflix wanted. Being a Netflix movie, I’m guessing the streaming service executives want this movie to be a movie you can half watch and half not. Throw in a little naked Chris Pine here, a little highland country there, and bada bing bada boom, we can get outta here in 2 hours and go to bed.
As Mel Gibson showed in 1995, Robert the Bruce (Pine) survived the events of the first uprising against England, with William Wallace taking the martyrdom route. This assassination by the British leads to a second uprising which Robert leads against England’s King Edward I (Stephen Dillane). Like William, Robert traverses the countryside, gathering supporters to his and his brother’s cause, among them James Douglas (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). Meanwhile, Edward’s son (Billy Howle) adopts a cruel strategy, stealing women and burning Scottish properties to illicit fear in the other Scots. Two such women who get stolen are Elizabeth de Burgh (Florence Pugh) and Marjorie Bruce (Josie O’Brien), the king’s wife and daughter.
David Mackenzie, the director, last graced us with his presence on the great Hell or High Water, which captured the amazing Texas frontier. For Outlaw King, Mackenzie takes his eye for epic scoping to the extreme. If you are a fan of the Scottish Highlands, you might want to take notes. There are a host of amazing tracking shots of Robert’s soldiers traversing castles, mountains, lakes, basically anything a nature and history fan would dream about. There’s also lavish ceremonies of king coronations or English court customs which look beautiful and give gravitas to the story. This nicely contracts with the war material, which is dirty and disgusting. Blood spray is used to great effect, so as to disturb but not too much (it’s Netflix, obvi, other than one truly gross sequence). In this case, technical surroundings to this story are SO good that they are almost worth the watch by themselves. And please, project this movie on the biggest screen, because those Highlands are stunning the bigger they get.
The story however, is nothing spectacular. The first hour goes by, and I start realizing that Robert is just making stupid decisions the whole time, other than with his wife. I expected more insubordination from his large number of brothers, but we get none. I think that’s because we learn NOTHING about Robert’s family or fellow war combatants really, other than James Douglas. As such, deaths that are supposed to mean something really don’t, so you kinda feel sad and then quickly go back to neutral. So we’re left with Robert the Loser and his wife and daughter, who are separated from him the whole time thus removing the interesting characters from interacting. Robert eventually does learn how to win in battle and I guess that’s satisfying, but it sort of happens out of luck and doesn’t shine the brightest light on the person we’re supposed to be rooting for. In the end, a decent man figures out how to gain freedom from his oppressors, a perfectly fine message if mostly told in a forgettable way. Except Chris Pine’s “little” Bruce, I’m sure not many women or gay men will be forgetting that.
Other than a few exceptions, the remix is never as good as the original. Same is true for a Scottish uprising. Sorry Netflix, but you don’t even get to claim that you did Scotland best. Outlander took that mantle years ago. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to find my own sassenach. I suggest you find someone as badass too, Robbie…