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Director Nick Love brings us another tale of Britain on the verge of chaos.  Set, like his previous film The Football Factory, amongst the working class, Outlaw paints a picture of a brutal world filled with casual violence where the weak will inevitably fall.

Bryant (Sean Bean) is a veteran who recently returned home from Iraq only to discover his wife snuggling on the couch with another man. Distraught and disenchanted, he meets up with security guard Simon (Sean Harris) who pushes him in the direction of righting wrongs, since they both perceive that society won’t properly punish the guilty.

Gene (Danny Dyer) is an acquaintance of Simon’s who has recently been attacked by two men after accidentally hitting their car. He seeks out Simon and joins the burgeoning gang.  Bryant meanwhile visits a fellow ex-military officer whose son Sandy was the target of an unprovoked attack. He finds no answers about how to deal with life after the military, but he does find another like-minded individual when he questions Sandy about his attack and what he’d do if he ran into the guys again. 

The final candidate for this group of vigilantes is Cedric (Lennie James), a barrister prosecuting a criminal figure named Manning.  Manning’s thugs warn him to drop the case, but when he refuses, they target his pregnant wife, leaving Cedric a widower.  He is brought into the fold by Simon who knew him from a court case a few years back.

With inside information being fed to them by a sympathetic policeman (Bob Hoskins) they begin to target various underworld footsoldiers as well as the people who have wronged them individually.  Things escalate as Manning is set free and both he and the police are on the trail of the five killers, and the group begins to fragment under the stress.

Outlaw is beautifully photographed. The sharp bursts of violence are jarringly realistic. The camera constantly shifts and moves, as if bristling with the same energy and twitchy frustration as the men onscreen, barely held in check.

Magnolia’s DVD features a lively, rambling commentary from Love and Dyer, a making of feature, video diaries that appeared on the film’s website, and a selection of deleted scenes.  Two other featurettes are noteworthy, one showcasing a specific sequence that involved a rave that occurs before a riot, accompanied with behind the scenes shots and the reasoning why it was scrapped.  The last featurette is called “Big Hitters,” and is comprised of interviews with people who contributed money to the films’ production, an option that Love offered to his fans via the film’s website.  For a fee ranging from £10-£100, fans would be listed in the film credits, and many were offered roles as extras in the movie. It’s an interesting approach to raise capital.

I really enjoyed this film. Though the bleak tone may not be for everyone, it’s worth a look for fans of revenge dramas.

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