Since they dropped their first original movie, Beasts of No Nation, back in 2015 Netflix have added over seventy others, with more on the way. They’ve covered every genre, comedies, documentaries, and animation, war movies, horror, and musicals…and now it’s the turn of the historical epic.
Outlaw King takes place in 14th century Scotland where the countries nobles have spent the past eight years waging war against the King of England, in an attempt to free their lands. The film starts in 1304 with those same nobles, including Robert the Bruce, surrendering to King Edward I.
Two years on and life is still hard for the Scottish people. While Bruce is delivering his taxes he gets swept up in a riot, sparked by the display of a severed limb of William Wallace, one of the leaders in the war (portrayed by Mel Gibson in 1995’s Braveheart). It’s this action that sparks Bruce to plan a second rebellion.
When he tries to recruit fellow noble John Comyn to the fight, Comyn refuses and further more tells Bruce he intends to inform King Edward of hiss treachery. Bruce promptly kills Comyn, an incident which compels the Scottish clergy to pardon him on the condition Bruce excepts the crown, making him The King of Scots.
When King Edward hears this news he makes Bruce an outlaw and sends his son, The Prince of Wales, to put end to Bruce and the rebellion.
The film’s directed, co-written and produced by David Mackenzie, who while making films for the past fifteen years, Outlaw King is his 10th, it wasn’t until 2013 prison drama Starred Up that people really started to take notice. Mackenzie followed this up in 2016 with Hell or High Water, which was nominated for several Oscars and Golden Globes, including Best Picture, Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor for Jeff Bridges.
Outlaw King received it’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on 6th September 2018. Where it received criticism for both it’s pacing and length, then running at 137 minutes. Mackenzie has subsequently cut almost twenty minutes from the runtime before it dropped on Netflix on 9th November 2018.
Clearly Mackenzie isn’t too proud to give scenes the chop that undoubtedly took a lot of time and effort to produce, including a battle sequence and an eight minute chase, the logistics of which must have been staggering. There was also a scene where Bruce meets William Wallace…presumably cut because Gibson was too old for the part.
As is often the case critical response and audience reactions differ considerably. While Rotten Tomatoes has a 55% fresh rating, based on 104 reviews, it’s audience reaction score is at 74%. While IMDb has at 7.1. Perhaps this is down to the re-editing, audiences had a much better reaction to extended versions of DC movies like Batman v Superman, so surely cutting stuff out of a movie can have the same effect, and a lot of those critic reviews would be based on the earlier version of the film.
There has also been some criticism towards Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s portrayal of James Douglas, which frankly seem like picking holes for the sake of a word count, claiming he’s overacting. Douglas was an outcast noble, his family stripped of their lands, there is good reason to believe he wouldn’t be quite as levelheaded as the over nobles. There’s also a reason he would be known to the English as bogeyman like figure Black Douglas.
Have you watched Outlaw King? What did you think? Let me know in the comments below.