Outlaw king
OUTLAW KING | Hell Or High Water director David Mackenzie takes on a Scottish icon – and Braveheart – in this Netflix epic…
A Scottish history lesson with Chris Pine.
So what have you seen so far?” asks Aaron Taylor-Johnson. The answer is simple: mud, mud and more mud. Teasers knew it was in for a squelchy experience when the message “bring wellies” was received. But this is something else. His beard, hands and tunic caked in grime, Taylor-Johnson is almost unrecognisable as the star of Kick-Ass. “It’s been a pretty relentless, gruelling journey this one, man,” he says. “It’s been an experience, that’s for sure.”
Well, that’s one way to describe Outlaw King, the new Netflix-produced feature about the life of Robert the Bruce. Starring Chris Pine as the medieval Scottish warrior, it’s directed by David Mackenzie, hot off his indie hit Hell Or High Water. “It’s certainly the biggest film of my career in terms of
the scope and scale and budget and period,” the director says, when Teasers finds him conducting a battle scene of epic proportions.
Today, in Mugdock Country Park, some 30 minutes from Glasgow, 400 extras, armed with broadswords and axes, are recreating the famous Battle of Loudoun Hill, in which Robert the Bruce’s forces took on the English troops of Edward I in May 1307. Horse carcasses and corpses (fake, of course) lie everywhere, while smoke and swearing fills the air.
For Pine – reuniting with Mackenzie after Hell Or High Water – it’s a dream come true. “I just wanted to do it because I wanted to swing swords and be a kid,” he grins.
Hopping across 40 different locations in Scotland – from Glasgow Cathedral to Glen Coe, and Linlithgow Palace in Edinburgh to the Isle of Skye – the production has been shooting
at Mugdock for the past 10 days. “We’ve chosen this location for the pine trees and the ridge, and to get scope without having to put 2,000 people here,” Mackenzie explains. “It’s supposed to be 500 Scots soldiers versus 2,500 mounted English cavalry plus infantry.”
The cast look on their last legs, as background artists charge at each other with bloody abandon. “It’s just absolute chaos in there. You don’t know who you’re fighting at times,” says Tony Curran, who plays Angus Macdonald, a faithful follower of Robert the Bruce. Mackenzie pays tribute to Rob Inch, the stunt coordinator who choreographed the fights on the director’s visceral 2013 prison drama Starred Up. “We always said it was like an expansion of some of that: raw and messy and just not clean violence,” he says.
With four cameras rolling to capture the carnage, it’s been an endurance test. “It’s been the hardest shoot I’ve ever had to do,” admits Pine. “Everything from running up mountainsides with real chainmail to being in a lake submerged without a wetsuit.” Fortunately, the camaraderie between the cast has been spot-on. “A real band of brothers,” says Taylor-Johnson, who plays Sir James Douglas, aka the Black Douglas, a strong ally of Robert the Bruce’s.
Yet Outlaw King is more than just a series of bloody battles between the Scottish rebels and the English army, overseen by Edward, Prince of Wales (Billy Howle). In Scotland, Robert the Bruce – King of Scots between 1306 and 1329 – is revered as a national hero for his leadership in the First Scottish War of Independence. “Clearly Robert holds a special place in Scottish history and people’s minds, especially given the current climate with the independence movement,” says Pine.
Back on the battlefield, Billy Howle is on camera. Clad in armour and carrying a red shield with gold insignia, he removes his helmet and stabs several soldiers amid blood-curdling cries. “I think we should do one more take, get in tighter,” observes Mackenzie, who believes Robert the Bruce’s story has “never properly been told”. Played by Angus Macfadyen, he famously appeared in Mel Gibson’s Braveheart – which retold the life of Scottish warrior William Wallace, but was heavily criticised for its historical inaccuracies.
“Braveheart was spoken about a lot,” admits Howle, who was keen to find the reality of his character. “[Edward] was made out to be this pushover and inadequate prince, which does feature in our story to a degree. But I said
I don’t want to tar it with the same brush that has been used in other dramatisations of that time period. I want to understand him as a threedimensional human being and also the pressures of taking over from his father who was considered notoriously as a brilliant tactician in combat.”
Howle argues that Mackenzie and Pine are operating in shades of grey, rather than making a black-and-white tale about the plucky Scots fighting for independence against the evil English overlords. “David made it very clear at the beginning that it’s beyond hero-villain,” he says. “It’s not as simple as that. The politics at the time were as complex - if not more so - than they are today. The same problems that we have in a sense.”
What about the famous scene with the spider? Anyone familiar with Robert the Bruce’s story will remember that the Scot took inspiration from a determined arachnid he watched trying to build its web.
“There’s a little bit in the cave,” hints Curran, although it was shot in a studio. A CGI spider? It’s about the only fake-sounding thing in a film where even the food for banquet scenes has been cooked according to medieval recipes. “Hopefully, this will really sing to people,” says Howle, “to understand who their heroes really are.” JM
ETA | 9 NOVEMBER / OUTLAW KING IS AVAILABLE ON NETFLIX THIS AUTUMN.
‘ROBERT HOLDS A SPECIAL PLACE IN SCOTTISH MINDS, ESPECIALLY IN THE CURRENT CLIMATE’ CHRIS PINE