AMERICAN OUTLAWS is a 2023 crime drama inspired by the true story of the Dougherty siblings, Dylan (Emory Cohen), Lee-Grace (India Eisley), and Ryan (Sam Strike). Starting in Florida, the film follows the three siblings, who, facing potential prison time, embark on a desperate cross-country crime spree in 2011. Dylan, the older brother, leads the trio, with Lee-Grace, a former stripper battling drug addiction, and Ryan, a soon-to-be father at risk of returning to prison for a parole violation. Their plan is to flee to Costa Rica for a fresh start, but their journey spirals into chaos after Dylan escalates a routine traffic stop by shooting at police, leading to a series of bank robberies and an eight-day manhunt. The film explores their loyalty and reckless pursuit of freedom, set against a backdrop of poverty, ultimately culminating with their capture, and collective jail sentences of 179 years in prison.
AMERICAN OUTLAWS, written and directed by Sean McEwen, is a mixed bag, but I definitely enjoyed watching it. It’s a low-budget, ambitious B-movie, but it’s also somewhat a victim of its budget. On the positive side, McEwen creates a gritty feel, particularly during the car chases, shootouts and various criminal acts. He also incorporates real news footage that adds authenticity and grounds the story in a specific date and time. The cast, led by India Eisley’s uninhibited portrayal of Lee-Grace, delivers committed performances, with Emory Cohen and Sam Strike capturing the siblings’ desperate bond. On the negative side, the low budget is also quite evident at times. You can’t help but wonder what McEwen could have done with more money to throw at the production. He’s clearly a talented filmmaker, and I’m looking forward to watching his future projects.
I did want to note that AMERICAN OUTLAWS is the final role of actor Treat Williams, who would pass away in a tragic accident on June 12th, 2023. The actor, who would have roles in classic films like Sidney Lumet’s PRINCE OF THE CITY (1981) and Sergio Leone’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA (1984), adds gravitas as Agent Jameison R. Donovan, though his screen time is limited. His five decade career doesn’t end on an extremely high note, but it’s still a joy to see him in a solid, authoritative role.
Ultimately, AMERICAN OUTLAWS is a solid thriller that gets by on a committed cast and a true-crime story, but it isn’t able to fully capitalize on its premise due to budget limitations. It’s worth a watch for fans of gritty crime dramas. Just be sure to keep your expectations in check.
The Outpost, which is currently streaming on Netflix and which deserves far more attention than it’s been given, is a film that left me breathless. Seriously, as the film came to its conclusion, I realized that I was so emotionally overwhelmed by what I had just seen that I actually had to stop for a few minutes and catch my breath. Once I was breathing again, I started to cry. I cried all the way through the end credits. That’s the sign of a powerful film.
Based on a true story, The Outpost takes place in 2009. PRT Kamdesh is an American military outpost in Northern Afghanistan. The post is located in a valley. The mountains, which rise high up into the sky, are not only beautiful but they also provide the perfect cover for the Taliban. The outpost is attacked on a nearly daily basis. At the start of the film, we’re told that one military strategist said that the base should have been named after George Custer because it was impossible to defend and that, should a big attack ever truly come, all 53 of the man on the base would essentially be sitting ducks.
The Outpost follows those 53 men as they go about their daily lives on the base. Commanders die and are replaced. The soldiers try to hold onto their sanity, even though they know that the “big attack” is inevitable. Though more than a few of the men have families back home, they try not to think about them. They can’t risk the distractions. Even the act of adopting a dog is seen as being a potentially dangerous move. The humor is dark, to the extent that the base’s theme song is “Everybody Dies.” While dealing with daily attacks, the base’s commanders try to win the support of the local villagers. One of the local elders asks if the Americans are the same invaders who have been in Afghanistan for the last 40 years. “No,” the flummoxed commander tries to explain, “those were the Russians.” It quickly becomes apparent that the soldiers and the villagers have at least one thing in common: no one is quite sure why the Americans are there or if they’ll ever able to leave. Orders are sent down by faceless generals and the men of PRT Kamdesh wait for the attacks that they all know are coming,
When the attack does come, it leads to one of the most visceral battle scenes that I’ve ever seen. There’s nothing glamorous about the way that The Outpost portrays war. Instead, it’s a confusing, loud, and terrifying nightmare. The Outpost establishes early on that anyone can die, an important lesson when you consider how many action movies have been made about heroes who are mythically impervious to even the slightest of injuries.
For roughly the final hour of the film, The Outpost puts us into the middle of the Battle of Kamdesh. The film pays tribute to the soldiers who fought in the battle, showcasing their bravery and the quick thinking that kept the battle from being even more of a disaster than it was. At the same time, it also reminds us that war is not fun and that the scars of combat are not just physical. When a soldier breaks down into tears while trying to talk about the battle, the film treats his feelings with the respect that they deserve. It’s been said that few people are as anti-war as the people who have actually experienced combat and The Outpost shows us why that is.
The Outpost is an important film. It’s especially important now that we have a new president and the national media is probably going to go back to ignoring whatever happens in Afghanistan for at least the next four years. For far too many people, it’s become the forgotten war, even though it’s still ongoing. The Outpost is a film that reminds us that no war and no soldier should ever be forgotten.
Talking to empty chairs aside, Clint Eastwood still goes down as one of the greatest living American filmmakers. This doesn’t dismiss the current slump he has been in the past couple years (Jersey Boys, Hereafter, J. Edgar just to name a few). This 2014 holiday season he’s set to release his latest film: American Sniper.
The film is an adaptation of the best-selling autobiography of the same name by former Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle. Steven Spielberg was initially attached to direct the film, but bowed soon after. In comes Clint Eastwood to take up the director’s chair with Bradley Cooper starring as Chris Kyle (also producer on the film).
The film has already made it’s premiere at the AFI Fest with a limited release on Christmas Day 2014.
American Sniper will have a general release date of January 16, 2015.
Warner Bros. Pictures makes it a triple-bill with the latest in a series of trailers for some of their upcoming films.
The latest to arrive is Clint Eastwood’s latest film. Eastwood adapts the Chris Kyle autobiography, American Sniper, of which Steven Spielberg was originally attached to direct until dropping out in the summer of 2013. Eastwood was announced a week later as taking on directing duties on one of the more sought after properties of the last couple years.
Bradley Cooper will star in as Chris Kyle with Sienna Miller in the role of Chris’ wife, Taya Renae Kyle.
American Sniper is set for a limited release on December 25, 2014 and going wide on January 20, 2015.
The last couple years have seen the return of an old trend from the 50’s and and 60’s. Those decades were what one would call the Golden Age of alien invasion films and stories. We had alien invasion films both serious and comedic. They ranged from classics like The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Thing to the awful like Plan 9 From Outer Space and tons of titles I could barely put down. In 2009 we had an alien-themed film which one could call the return of the genre back to the forefront. District 9 by South African filmmaker Neil Blompkamp was universally hailed as one of the best scifi films of the decade and even got nominated for an Academy Best Picture.
Then there’s the other alien-invasion film from 2010 which covers the low-end of the equation. The Strause Brothers’ own Skyline was universally panned by critics and audiences alike. While some did enjoy the film for it’s “so bad, it’s good” quality (I use that term as loosely as redlight hooker). This film was everything that was opposite of District 9. While I did enjoy that film because it was bad I don’t look back at it too fondly.
The latest film in this alien-invasion resurgence is from another South African filmmaker and one whose body of work is mostly genre films of the low-budget variety. Jonathan Liebesman’s own entry into this scifi genre is Battle: Los Angeles and it lands smack dab between District 9 and Skyline in regards to overall execution. It’s a workman-like film which takes an epic alien invasion war and brings it down into the pavement. We see the film through the eyes of a rifle squad of Marines and that’s where the film really becomes a really fun experience.
Battle: Los Angeles begins in medias rea with the war between the unknown alien invaders already having made their initial surprise landings and the U.S. military making it’s countermoves. We learn from a hasty news conference held by a military commander that the alien forces have landed at over a dozen or so coastal cities around the world have begun to move inland. I was somewhat discouraged to find out that San Francisco didn’t even last half a day and was lost. With Los Angeles the last major coastal city on the west coast that still had a viable military presence we hear one of the film’s tagline in that they cannot lose Los Angeles.
After this brief intro we go back 24 hours before the battle begins to get the character introductions sorted out. We see the Marines who will make up the squad the audience will follow through the rest of the film get their brief time to get introduced with some basic backstory to give them some personality. The one which stood out from all the war film archetype characters was Aaron Eckhart’s grizzled and retiring Staff Sgt. Nantz. He becomes the anchor that holds all the players into a cohesive unit and who also keeps the film from spiraling out into Skyline territory. Some of the cookie-cutter characters we meet would be the commanding officer straight out of Officer Training School who has never seen combat but is eager to lead his men and sees the combat-experienced SSgt. Nantz as someone who might usurp his authority. We also get the Marine whose previous combat tour has left him psychologically damaged and tries to earn his mind back into fighting state. We even get the young Marine who everyone sees as the little brother and who also happens to be a virgin.
To say that the characters in Battle: Los Angeles looked like they came out of old-school World War 2 war film casting call would be an understatement. The film just gives these characters (outside of Eckhart’s veteran noncom) enough personality that we’re able to distinguish one jarhead from another. Characterization is not one of this film’s strong suit, but once the bullets and alien stuff begin to start flying the need to get more character moments from these individuals really go out the window and the audience just holds on as they follow this Marine rifle squad into combat with an enemy force better equipped.
The film borrows much from battle sequences from Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down and Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan as director Liebesman opts to use a cinema verite style to give the audience a documentary, imbedded reporter look to the whole proceeding. The shaky cam look this filmmaking style uses may turn off some people, but the way the action sequences (which pretty much takes up close to 3/5’s of the film’s running time) were edited actually keeps the shaky cam from becoming too overwhelming. The film actually does a very good job of showing the confusing nature of battle, but also the fog of war for the grunts on the ground.
Before I get to what about this film really worked for me I will have to admit that the film’s screenplay is it’s biggest weakness. It’s a major weakness that for some viewers will sink the whole film no matter whatever bright points it might have. The film’s core story was actually pretty good. A story about an alien invasion told from the point of view of human soldiers on the ground trying to repel the invaders was a concept that hasn’t really been explored in this type of film. While that foundation for the film is strong the dialogue and how the characters were written left much to be desired. I put the onus on the flimsiness of most of the characters on the screenplay more than the characters themselves. Spielberg and Scott were able to use the very same war film character archetypes and make them work in their film, but that was possible due to much stronger screenplays.
In this film the dialogue’s very hokeyness doesn’t inspire as much as it makes for some wince inducing moments. I can’t say that all of the dialogue was bad. They’re no worse than most war films both good and bad. The dialogue just didn’t seem to have any energy to them and sounded as if it was still being read from an earlier and much rougher draft. I do believe that if the screenplay had been given a couple of doctoring by competent, veteran screenwriters the film would’ve benefitted greatly from it. Instead, the film ended up having to have a strong veteran actor in Aaron Eckhart deliver these average lines with enough conviction and gravitas to keep the film from becoming a parody of a war film. The fact that the film still manages to hold together despite the weaknesses in the screenplay is a testament to one actor performing the hell out of that script. I won’t even go into some people’s issues about the science or battle tactics in the film since I believe the film was consciously built to keep those vague. The film is not about the who or what about this invasion and why the aliens are here, but about that rifle squad from the 2/5 Marines.
Now, what really worked for me about this film is the battle itself. For a fan of both alien invasion and war films this one combined the two and succeeding in delivering what the filmmakers promised. Battle: Los Angeles gave a visceral look into the trials and tribulations of a squad of Marines as they do their part on the ground to fight off a much more advanced enemy. There’s a scene when the Marines are flying over Santa Monica on their way to their Forward Operation Base and we see a running battle on the gorund below between human defenders and the aliens who have moved up from the beach. Even the firefights Nantz and his squad were in once they entered the battle behind enemy lines looked to be influenced with the many battle footage of American forces conducting ground war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The special effects both CGI and practical to make Los Angeles look like a wartorn urban battleground was done very well. The aliens and their machines were given a look that wasn’t sleek and shiny but utilitarian and efficient. Some have said that the design of the aliens and their machines looked lazy, but I actually believe that if the filmmakers had fallen back on traditional advanced futuristic designs that would have been lazy. These aliens looked like they were design with only one thing in mind and that was to wage war on a people.
The score to the film by Brian Tyler was good and serviceable as his own modern riff on the old-school World War 2 film score, but I thought what this film needed was a veteran composer who knows how to bring out the machismo, gung-ho and esprit de corps of the Marines the audience followed throughout the film. It’s a shame that film composer passed away several years ago because he definitely would’ve given Battle: Los Angeles the kind of score which would’ve elevated the film from a thrilling war film into an epic one.
In the end, Jonathan Liebesman’s first foray into a bigger budget production hit more than it miss though one of those misses many of it’s detractors have seen as a fatal flaw in the film. Battle: Los Angeles doesn’t reinvent the alien invasion film, but just takes a new angle on the whole proceedings. It’s a film that shows influences from better war films by better filmmakers, but also gives hints that this young South African filmmaker has shown glimpses of talent that could take him places that his compatriot Neil Blompkamp has reached with his own alien-themed film. Battle: Los Angeles is just an old-school war film dressed up with modern fatigues and arrived onto the screen with all the positives and negatives of those very same traditional war films people love and hate since film as entertainment was created. It’s not on the same level as District 9 but it is definitely heads and shoulders above the very laughable Skyline of 2010.
As an aside, while I was watching the film I was struck by how this film looked like a preview of what Blompkamp’s potential sequel to his District 9 would look if and when Christopher Johnson came back to Earth with an armada of very pissed off Prawns…and speaking of pissed off Prawn: pig cannon.
There’s not much to say about Return of the Living Dead 5: Rave to the Grave other than it’s actually worse than the movie before it. Return of the Living Dead 4: Necropolis was really bad and not in the so bad it’s funny. What had been a cult horror franchise which had fun with the zombie genre in addition to putting some genuine scares in people, these last two Return of the Living Dead films should pretty much kill the franchise just when the zombie revival is still going on strong.
Ellory Elkayem does directing duty for this fifth installment. He also directed the fourth film. I had thought that not everything should be laid at Elkayem’s feet when it came to who to blame for the lackluster and awful film that was Necropolis, but after sitting through Rave to the Grave I have to say that whatever good will Ellory Elkayem built up with his funny take on the giant creature feature, Eight-Legged Freaks, has been wasted with his back-to-back filming of Necropolis and Rave to the Grave. Elkayem films both films one after the other and I am going to assume this was more to save on the budget than any sort of continuity with the actors hired to play recurring roles. If saving money was the main reason then it sure didn’t look like it. Except for a few hero-zombie (zombies given more screentime than most thus given a better make-up effect) scenes the film clearly shows it’s ultra low-budget pedrigree. I don’t have problems with low-budget horror movies as long as there’s a sense of energy and enjoyment by those making it, but neither Necropolis and Rave to the Grave showed any one of the two.
Rave to the Grave occurs one year after the events of Necropolis and the teenage survivors of that film have now graduated and attending college. The film never really makes it clear if they’re in back in the U.S. attending college or still in Eastern Europe where the previous film was set. Either way the survivors from the previous film seem to have moved on quite well from their horrific experiences in Necropolis. The fact that they don’t seem to recognize the newly found containment barrel marked with the label of 2-4-5 Trioxin just adds to the weird and huge plot hole between film four and five. One would think that these kids would have it etched forver in their minds that containment barrel with 2-4-5- Trioxin equals horror. Instead they naively investigate and research the barrel with one of their friends realizing he could turn the chemical leaking from the barrel into a new form of rave drug whose extreme hallucinogenic effects also hide a side-effect which basically turns anyone who partakes of the drug into a zombie.
The rest of the movie deals with the survivors finally realizing the crisis they’ve unleashed and instead of calling for police or military help decide to go to the same outdoor rave party where everyone is taking the drug to try and find the person who made the drug Z and stop him from taking them. Like I said earlier, the film really has major plot holes and most of the time doesn’t make much sense. What we get in the end is an excuse to have a huge set piece where the survivors get to shoot as many zombies as possible while at the same time allow for the random raver to suddenly become a zombie out of the blue. There’s also a subplot of a couple of bumbling Men-in-Black type agents whose job it is to recover the Trioxin barrel while remaining inconspicuous. The secret organization they belong to must be global since I could barely understand their lines with the heavy Russian accent used by both “actors”.
My disappointment in what could’ve been a nice follow-up to the first three Return of the Living Dead movies was compounded by the sheer Z-movie level of Rave to the Grave after the awful work that was Necropolis. For those wanting to see a good b-level zombie movie that’s bad but enjoyable at the same time should check out House of the Dead 2. Yes, the sequel to Uwe Boll’s rancid and awful House of the Dead ended up being better than the original and way more entertaining than Return of the Living Dead 5: Rave to the Grave. I wouldn’t even accept this film as a free dvd if someone gave it to me. In fact, I may end up punching that person as a reflex action.
I remember watching the original Return of the Living Dead in 1985. That zombie movie played on the premise that Night of the Living Dead actually happened. It was a great twist and interesting idea. The zombies in that film weren’t shambling and dumb like the one’s in Romero’s film. Instead these zombies were pretty quick and could talk and formulate plans and traps. Also these zombies couldn’t be killed by destroying the brain. It was the birth of the superzombies and it made for a fun experience. One thing it also had was a nice dose of comedy mixed in with the horror.
A few years later they had a sequel to Return of the Living Dead that was a good second helping. Nothing to write home about but it was a fun gory flick. Then came a second sequel which dropped the comedy and instead tried to be Romeo and Juliet meets brain-eating zombies. Other than the usual gore and bloodsplatter this second sequel was an utter failure. It took over 10 years for someone to try making a couple more sequels, but sure enough someone found a way to do it. They even found a good enough director in Ellory Elkayem (he directed the fun, campy giant spider monster flick Eight-Legged Freaks). There was talk that this third sequel will return the ROTLD franchise back to its roots of horror mixed with comedy. I was stoked about the news. Then when it came time to see Return of the Living Dead 4: Necropolis, I found out that it was going to go direct-to-cable. This usually means bad news all around about the overall quality of the finished film, but I was still going to give it a chance.
I finally saw its premiere on Sci-Fi channel in 2005 and all my low expectations weren’t even reached by the what I saw on the TV. The movie starts off well enough and right from the get-go they don’t hide the fact that the film is taking place in some Eastern European country. Peter Coyote the — only actor with any sort of talent — makes his appearance in this scene and there’s not even any attempt to make his character abit mysterious of whether he’s a good guy or a bad guy. Coyote’s scientist role in the film screams evil mad scientist. The rest of the cast seemed like it was randomly picked from a college campus and from the streets of Romania. The dialogue was bad enough but having them read out loud by amateurs just made it all worse.
The whole premise of the film outside of reintroducing newcomers to the zombifying effects of Trioxin seemed like the writers were trying to emulate Resident Evil instead of Return of the Living Dead. There’s the mega-corporation which deals with everything known to man and also research and develops illegal biowarfare technology like zombies armed with hi-tech weapons. Resident Evil did this better (thats not saying much) so it goes without saying that ROTLD4: Necropolis just didn’t know what it wanted to be. There wasn’t any of the comedy that made the first two films in the franchise so fun to watch. It looked as if they tried to make a serious zombie movie and instead it turned out to be seriously bad.
Even the zombies themselves ended up being inconsistent with the zombies from the first two films. Some seemed smart enough but most were of the Romero kind which goes against everything that is ROTLD. Their feeding habits even changed from eating nothing but brains but to eating other parts of the body. Then the filmmakers made it so they’re not indestructible anymore. Shooting these zombies in the head will drop them like a sack of bricks.
There really wasn’t anything fun about this sequel. Zombie movies are suppose to be dumb, gory fun but instead Return of the Living Dead 4: Necropolis just ends up being dumb, horrible and awful. I had alot of hope in Ellory Elkayem as an up-and-coming genre director, but cranking out this film after making such a fun one in Eight-Legged Freaks is a mystery and saddening. I wouldn’t recommend this film as a rental on dvd. Just go rent the original trilogy of films in the series and leave this one alone.
This site has been pushing the upcoming alien invasion film, Battle: Los Angeles since the first trailer started coming out several months ago. Sony Pictures has just released the latest one and this Super Bowl tv spot is shorter than the usual trailers, but it definitely shows the potential for this film’s awesomeness.
It pretty much uses some of the same footage from the previous trailers, but shows new ones of the soldiers’ reaction to the initial stages of the invasion and how they’ll be the one’s to have to fight the big fight.
There’s not much else I can say about this upcoming alien invasion film coming out on 3-11-2011. I shall be there on Day One to see it in all it’s big-screen glory. This third trailer show’s a bit more of the alien race doing the invading and the unit of U.S. Marines set to repel and fight them off. I will say that final scene in the trailer with what looked like a massive construct made out of the rubble of Los Angeles just whetted my appetite to see this film even more. Talk about a moneyshot.
Below are the two other official trailer released for Battle: Los Angeles.
Through the Shattered Lens 