Film Review – Outlaw King

While it was released 23 years ago, “Braveheart” certainly hasn’t lost steam in film appreciation circles, retaining a vocal fanbase for the Best Picture winner that continues to this day, supporting various home video releases. The story of “Outlaw King” picks up where the saga of William Wallace ended, but co-writer/director David Mackenzie (“Hell or High Water”) isn’t making a sequel. At least, this is likely what the helmer was telling himself during production. “Outlaw King” isn’t technically connected to the Mel Gibson effort, but the association isn’t exactly muted, with Mackenzie organizing another historical bloodbath with Scotsmen tearing apart Englishmen over the future of the land. As passionate as the production is about the material, it’s difficult to shake a case of deja vu here, with the epic sweep here closely resembling bigness and toughness of Gibson’s feature, only Mackenzie doesn’t quite have the stamina to keep organizing brutality, slowly losing his ability to tell a clear story as the endeavor grows punch-drunk. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com