Outlaw King Impresses With Its Production Value But Underwhelms With Its Characters

The Hollywood epic was a common sight in the 1950's and 1960's as Hollywood tried to combat the rise of television programming with a horde of movies that used gargantuan budgets to bring to life massive-in-scale stories that usually took place in ancient periods of history. How funny then to consider that the newest Netflix original movie Outlaw King, which reunites director David Mackenzie with his Hell or High Water leading man Chris Pine, is an obvious homage to those types of movies, complete with a $120 million budget that makes it the most expensive Netflix movie yet (Martin Scorsese's The Irishman is waiting in the wings for its chance to turn to Outlaw King and say "Hold my beer!"), yet it'll be seen by the vast majority of people on...televisions!

Despite Being About A Real-Life Genius, A Beautiful Mind Is A Pretty Thoughtless Movie

Russell Crowe has had quite the odd career hasn't he? Now, he's a famous actor, no one would ever deny that, but after headlining two back-to-back Best Picture winners (Gladiator and the subject of this review, A Beautiful Mind) and scoring a Best Actor win, the guy starred in two big projects (Master And Commander: Far Side of The World and Cinderella Man) that underperformed financially and then headlined the box office dud A Good Year in November 2006. In the nearly twelve years since then, he's only starred in a handful of movies and mostly stuck to supporting roles. Not an odd career trajectory at all for a leading man to shift into supporting roles, it just feels, to me anyway, like Crowe's time as a leading man came and went in the blink of an eye given how buzzy he was at the start of the century.

Gladiator Is Straightforward To A Fault

Aside from them both being Best Picture winners, it's doubtful anyone would ever think to compare Gladiator and Driving Miss Daisy, but that's just what I'm going to be doing today. Obviously, both films differ greatly in terms of story, tone and types of characters they explore, but both are feature films that I've watched for the first time recently that are amiable endeavors that also can't help but feel like they're a little basic, they stick to tried-and-true storytelling & characters too heavily and in the process feel like they're eschewing the chance to carve out their own identity, though at least Gladiator does have the distinction of reviving the swords-and-sandals genre in a big way at the dawn of the 21st century.