O Estrangeiro

There was some promise in this film. But I have to say it got buried under poor writing, unimaginative cinematography, and a heavy-handed approach to film-making and storytelling.

Leto performed well, given the fact they handed him an impossible character. One which is supposed to connect with the audience on an emotional level, while also being a detached psychopathic killer. Believe it or not, there is a way to do this engagingly and 'correctly'. Leon the Professional comes to mind. They didn't do that here.

The overly-long transition scenes were a poor attempt at pacing. The acting rarely managed to deliver the goods, and the ending was trite and unimpressive. However, they clearly splurged on the scoring which was a welcome surprise. It's a Japanese lovefest all the way around, giving us all the the things traditionally associated with the country. But while I appreciate paying homage to an incredibly unique and beautiful culture, I don't think staining it with the horrific crimes of a small subset of the population was entirely appropriate.

Bottom line? I don't think this movie is worth your time. And I'm sorry to say that. It really had some potential, it was so unrealized.

The outline plot of this movie, and the fact that it had Craig Fairbrass in a starring role made me think this had the ingredients of a fun, action movie so I looked forward to this with much anticipation of a well spent hour and a half. I am not one for being too petty and analysing a movie and I'm sure many movie fans will spot something such as poor acting before I would.

However, there was so many elements of this film. That were below par, I just felt they had to be mentioned.

I was disappointed in the performance of the lead male, Craig Fairbrass.

He did not seem convincing, and his lines simply just did not seem natural.

In addition to this, the editing and sound were very poor along with the picture quality.

I gave this 4 out of 10 and I was possibly being a little generous.

You know the story/drill here, it'll be hardly surprising how this will develop. Recently there was another movie called "Prince" which had Bruce Willis in it (well sort of), but the real funny thing is that Jason Patric was in that movie too. He had a different role than that he has in this one, but just the fact that he'd be in such similar movies alone is kind of crazy.

The action scenes are decent, though nothing to get too excited about. James Caan is great as always, even if his role is pretty paper thin, he makes the most of it. It's very simple as stated before and acting from other is not really something to look forward to exactly. Without Caan I'd given this max a 4/10

The former British military Lex Walker (Craig Fairbrass) is presently working as a contractor in Afghanistan, when he is informed that his estranged daughter Samantha (Melissa Ordway) died in Los Angeles. He travels to London, but is informed that he needs to fly to LA to identify the body. When he arrives at the morgue, he finds that the corpse is not hers and decides to look for Samantha´s whereabouts. He discovers the last phone calls and places where Samantha was and meets her former boss Karl Schuuster (James Caan), who has a suspicious behavior. Lex proceeds his investigation, while is followed by Detective Klein (Jason Patric) that is assigned for the case, and by Schuuster's men that want to find Samantha. What happened to Samantha?

"The Outsider" is an absolutely underrated action film. The story is good, the characters are well-developed and the conclusion is highly entertaining. Fortunately I have not seen the IMDb User Rating before watching this movie; otherwise I would might have been misguided. Fans of action films will certainly enjoy "The Outsider". My vote is seven.

Title (Brazi): Perseguição Implacável" ("Relentless Pursue")

This could have been a really good film but we struggled to hear the whole film. The English accent of the main character was not brilliant and the West Coast US accent of many of the actors meant it really difficult to hear individual words. We went through all the changes of sound on our system - even turned off the surround sound in case this made a difference, but each the voices were mumbled and muffled. it was a case of guess the words the whole way through. Have to say though, that I have to nominate Craig Fairbrass for a better Jack Reacher than Tom Cruise. I hope Lee Childs etc decide to change the actor for the next film