Outcast [2014]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

This is a movie that fails on basically every level, and ultimately we are the ones who must suffer for this. On the surface, this movie seems like a winner. It stars Nicolas Cage and Hayden Christensen, two actors renowned for their odd acting choices. It is set in 1100s China for some reason. No one saw it. This feels like good omens all around until you are an hour into the movie and you wonder if Nic Cage is ever going to actually show up. He does, by the way, for a mere twenty minutes of the film, the best twenty minutes but still barely worth it after having to spend an hour watching Christensen and the two non-evil children of the former emperor wandering around China. This movie also only made back one fifth of its budget, and part of the reason for that is that it was banned in Hong Kong for promoting the white savior narrative. And if you can't make your money back in China, with a movie that is set in China and has Asian actors, you are screwed. The Wikipedia page even uses the Chinese poster for the movie, which is just so very sad. But if the movie wasn't really meant to be seen in America, and China found it offensive, who is it for? No one. No one but bad movie people who clap excitedly at the prospective of another eccentric Nic Cage performance.

The movie starts in the Middle East during the Crusades with Nic and Hay killing brown people for Jesus. We were a little confused about what this had to do with anything because a few years later we ended up in China (the Far East) with a whole plot regarding an old emperor bequeathing his kingdom to his younger son who escapes with his sister while the older son offs his dad and claims he didn't do it. The young son and sister (who is apparently a well known actress in China and going to be Mulan in a live action Disney remake) run into Hayden in an opium-stupor and somehow this leads to a team up. They wander forever and eventually pick up another lost girl who holds no baring on the plot. Not much happens in this hour. Finally Nic Cage, a.k.a. The White Ghost, shows up with one eye and a pirate accent for the only funny parts of the movie. There's a final showdown against the big brother who kills Nic Cage and his Chinese wife and stabs his sister and Hayden. Somehow the sister and Hayden survive and the 14-year-old brother is put on the throne and all is well. Because never in history did a child ruler lead to a military coup.

Aside from the white savior nonsense and the overall limp plot, there are a couple other bad things worth pointing out. The direction is garbage, and it turns out this is actually a directorial debut. There's a lot of shaky camera and a really strange scene where Hayden dumps water over his head and the camera is inside the bucket. The editing is confusing to the point where it seems like the camera is trying to hide things from the audience. Fight scenes involve an entire army attacking a single guy one or two men at a time. Oh, and there's at least one instance of "that slutty outfit the barmaid is wearing isn't historically accurate." 

Overall, if you can find just the twenty minutes Nic Cage is in then this movie is worth exactly that amount of time and no more.

Spoon Rating: 2