The opening shot to Outlaw King promises something that the script isn’t ready to provide. David Mackenzie opens his period epic with a nearly ten minute unbroken shot that drifts in and out of a tent, unfolds a drunken sword match, and then concludes with a catapult hurling a flaming boulder at a distant castle. The shot opens the movie with a proclamation that this will be a daring sequel to the 1996 Academy Award winning Braveheart.
Just like Mel Gibson’s film, this movie doesn’t skimp on the brutality of what war during the 14th century must’ve been like. But, unlike Gibson’s film, Outlaw King is built on skirmishes more than massive battles. This keeps the action moving, but to what end? Mackenzie, working on a script that he collaborated on, struggles to find an emotional hook to the proceedings.
Robert the Bruce (Chris Pine) is a leader of a village who’s thrust into taking the throne over all of Scotland after the torture and execution off William Wallace. He builds his army by going from village to village recruiting men for his cause.
But, the British forces are constantly one step ahead of them. Their larger and more advanced army nearly decimates them several times with only a few key soldiers able to slip through their fingers. Then, Robert sees that he can attack individual castles led by the British and slowly, but effectively overturn settlements.
Simultaneously, there is a strained subplot focusing on the arranged marriage and romance between Robert the Bruce and Elizabeth Burgh (Florence Pugh). There is a fraction of a story here, but reportedly Mackenzie chopped twenty minutes from the film after it premiered earlier this year. The film feels the strain. It has the clear distinction of needing thirty to forty-five more minutes or needing to still be twenty minutes shorter.
The romantic arc does add an interesting feminist angle to the story. Elizabeth is fiercely outspoken in public and in the confines of her marriage. Mackenzie gives their relationship room to breathe, letting them slowly get to know each other. The problem is that they don’t have enough time to develop as anything other than caricatures of lovers.
The romance is a parallel to the Gibson film. It took a personal stake for Wallace to rebel against the British in Braveheart, and Robert the Bruce is propelled into action by a personal investment as well. The difference is that the first hour of that film is based on the slow building of the romance. Wallace is motivated by love and not by political ideology, which makes him a sympathetic, if not wholly interesting character. He is thinly drawn, but Gibson is a genuinely compelling actor and can ring something out of nearly nothing.
Chris Pine is saddled with a similar lack of character, luckily, he is one of the finest movie stars working today. He brings a natural electricity to the screen even as he seems wholly out of period. Pine looks like a man of the modern age, or like his performance in The Finest Hours, a man that fits into the golden age of Hollywood. Even dirtied up, Pine is still too good looking with his piercing eyes and steady demeanor. In comparison to Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who is very handsome in his own right, Taylor-Johnson actively works to make his façade more tattered and fitting of someone in this age. He is an actor that I haven’t particularly cared for in the past, but it might be his willingness to dive headlong into the muck and mire of this world that makes him stand out amongst the hordes of barely comprehensible characters.
Mackenzie mounts a large-scale epic fairly well from the action perspective, but there is an emptiness to the rest of the film. There are no true missteps, just miscalculated story elements that fill the space with a vacuousness that the rest of the film can’t overcome. There must have been a conscious decision that this could be an Oscar player, especially with David Mackenzie and Chris Pine reteaming after Hell of High Water. With that knowledge it is difficult to approach the movie as an entity on its own. In many ways, there is a feeling of homework for much of the film. While there is excitement to be had from the several engrossing set pieces, there is a placidity that is unmissable. The film might be terminal on arrival if it weren’t for the performances and direction, nevertheless Mackenzie and Pine will come out of it unscathed because they acquit themselves nobly in a film that didn’t call for that level of craft.