Out of Exile

I rented this on release. Overall the film is trite. I found myself losing interest several times because it tended to drag in spots. I feel it could have been cut down shorter. The Protagonist Gabriel comes across as an aloof delivering an incredibly underwhelming performance. This could be perhaps the Actor seemingly more befitting as a Character Actor than a leading man. The brother Wes was a hot headed Veteran with ptsd. As a Veteran myself this was ridiculous. Stereotypes surrounding mental illness such as ptsd and the way this was portrayed was one dimensional and stereotypical of the "Dangerous" unhinged Veteran. The Character lacked depth and I found myself watching an Actor attempting to act mental illness and pop pills. His physicality came across more like someone on Cocaine then living with the challenges of ptsd. I didn't believe it. The Antagonist played by Peter Greene as Whitman Rader kept this film afloat. His Character came across gritty and believable. I found myself wanting to see him more as his Character was interesting. Had it not been for him I would have turned it off. Overall the film is nothing new. The plot, the heist story we've been fed many times before. However, if you are going to give it to me make it worth my investment of $6.99. If you're bored and can find nothing else to watch then add this to your list of disposable forgettable content being put out. Out of Exile gets 1 Star. I debated giving it 2, but just couldn't get over the stupid unbelievable Character Wes.

Had the pleasure of watching this on the big screen. Kyle Kauwika Harris nailed it once again. The cast all played perfect parts that I feel were made for them. Hats off to the entire team that put this together. The movie touches on so many complex subjects of why each person is going down the path they are on. Whether it be childhood trauma, broken brother bonds, PTSD and the effects of war, love, friendship, hate, fear, wanting a better life, children. The characters have their reasons, sometimes surprising you on how deep those reasons run. The writing makes you feel this and root for the "bad guy". Best independent film to come out of Oklahoma in a long time. Bravo, everyone!

I had not heard about this 2022 crime thriller titled "Out of Exile" from writer and director Kyle Kauwike Harris prior to stumbling upon it here in 2023. And of course I opted to watch it, on account of it being a movie that I hadn't already seen.

And while "Out of Exile" was watchable, it was ultimately a rather generic crime thriller. The movie offered nothing extraordinary to the genre that hasn't been done or seen in other movies before it. Now, don't get me wrong here, because "Out of Exile" is a fair enough movie and certainly is watchable for a single viewing, just take into consideration that it is a generic movie.

Of all the cast members in this movie, I was only familiar with Peter Greene. And looking through the cast members here on IMDb, I am surprised to see that former wrester Jake "The Snake" Roberts was in the movie as well, I couldn't recognize him on the screen at all.

The storyline in "Out of Exile" was adequate, just a shame that the movie was run page by page from the 'how to make a crime thriller' handbook.

Watchable and enjoyable for what it was, "Out of Exile" is adequate for a single viewing. There is not enough meat on the storyline to support more than a single viewing though.

My rating of "Out of Exile" lands on a five out of ten stars.

Nothing original here. It's a recycled regurgitated story we've seen over and over again.

The sound editing is choppy and inconsistent. Especially during the stripper scene using crisp new dollar bills?!!

Actors acting and overacting. The bouncing camera gets tired and nauseating especially during the garage scene. At this point it's no longer watchable. The news reporter during the bar scene was awful and the bar fight argument was so over the top over or under acting it's hard to tell. Mixed with the bouncing camera is nauseating.

It's officially unwatchable at this point.

For a highschool or first year film school it would get a 4 or 5/10 at best. The script and story is tired. I can't even social media with it on in the background.

The high rating reviews are extremely exaggerated just like the acting.

Clearly this was a low budget B film, and I can accept that, but I've never seen a film take such a fall in the final act as this film did. It actually had a decent score for a B film, and the cinematography was good. Writer and director Kyle Kauwika Harris did a fairly decent job directing, but failed to direct his cast properly, as most barely looked awake or wanting to be in the film, specifically Adam Hampton, who's acting was the worst, and was the most unconvincing character of them all. Not sure why he was cast as the lead.

This film needed lots of editing and cutting down, because there just wasn't enough meaty narrative to effectively fill in the 107 min runtime, and the snail speed pacing made it feel much longer. Although this story had nothing new to offer that hasn't been done many times before, and much better, at least the first two acts had a cohesive narrative, albeit cliched with the many unnecessary and mostly time-wasting sub plots and familiar genre tropes.

But Kauwika's third act unraveled so bad with tons of plot holes, and became convoluted so bad, it created more questions than answers. It tried to be smart, but failed. It's like Kauwika threw everything and the kitchen sink into the final act, hoping something would stick, and got too lazy to wrap up the viewers impatient investment of the first two acts, into a cohesive resolution. So much didn't make any sense in that third act. Had Kauwika wrapped up the narrative without the easily avoidable plot holes, I could've easily given this a 6 or a 7/10. But investing my time only to end up with an unsatisfied ending with more questions than answers, was annoying. Don't waste your time with this like I did.