Follow-up to ‘Braveheart’ a worthy effort
The impressively made historical drama “Outlaw King” has a lot to offer — a ferocious finale, a tender romance, Oscar-caliber art direction, formidable camerawork and some decent performances. Sometimes its screenplay gets a little stuck in the medieval mud, but there’s almost always something on the screen to admire.
The story takes us to the early 14th century, basically where the Oscar-winning “Braveheart” left off. Instead of Mel Gibson’s William Wallace fighting the English army, Chris Pine’s Robert the Bruce is about to take a stab, literally, at ridding Scotland of its persistent occupiers.
The first 30 minutes feel a bit heavy on the expository side, though we need to be grounded in the Middle Ages conflict and the various allegiances and rivalries. Even if the pace gets a little slow, talented director David Mackenzie (“Hell or High Water”) handles these early scenes with great care and gets the period details just right. We marvel at the opening sequence, a one-shot wonder that incorporates a shortlived peace agreement with British king Edward I, a sword fight, and a breathtaking catapult attack on a castle.
Mackenzie also gets great mileage out of the decreed marriage between Robert and Edward’s goddaughter Elizabeth (Florence Pugh, mesmerizing). Pine and Pugh have a nice chemistry — both in and out of their clothes — and it’s a shame when they eventually get separated, because the script doesn’t provide Robert a lot of interaction with other memorable characters.
As Robert gets into rebel mode, we witness battle after battle, as the outmanned Scottish rebels begin retaking castles in their homeland. At this point, the film begins to feel a little rushed, as we lurch from one conflagration to the next. As one might expect from Mackenzie, many of these ultraviolent skirmishes are competently executed, but we don’t spend enough time with the characters to get the full impact.
That’s the core challenge of “Outlaw King” — this is probably an eight-hour limited series stuffed into a two-hour movie. It’s a credit to the filmmakers that the proceedings remain coherent, though they are forced to rely on helpful cue cards to keep things in context.
In many ways, the handsomely mounted Netflix film harks back to the days when Hollywood made epic prestige movies, not just comic book fare and CGI spectacles — and it’s hard to escape the irony that a streaming service is filling a void left by the major studios. Though the ambitious “Outlaw King” doesn’t always fire on all cylinders, moviegoers deserve this chance to see it on the big screen, before it starts showing on a laptop near you.