The Outlaws

• Directed by Joey Palmroos and Austen Paul
• November 4, 2024 (Finland)

A group of outlaws discover the loot from their train heist missing and turn on each other as they try to find the real thief.

The basics of The Outlaws is good with the potential for a great deal to happen, but the film does not even make it to the 90 minute mark. The movie is largely figuring out who did what and who each truly is. Secrets are not revealed via questions or parsing of information to the cast but via flashbacks to the audience.

There is much communicated through narration by a preacher character (Sterling Scott) that randomly crosses paths with outlaw JT (Dallas Hart). The narration works for telling the immediate story but fails to explain how the preacher came into any knowledge. It’s all but stated that the preacher JT meets is the one telling the story but how did he learn the story? The scene as it was found by the posse hunting the titular outlaws doesn’t explain anything. It just says everybody killed everybody. There’s no indication the story was imported before one person died or anything. This is not even framed as a theory on things.

Eric Roberts as Thomas “Bloody Tom” Higgins gives a performance once he gets on screen that really drowns out all the other characters even when the cast is whittled down to two. He just adds a lot of flair and panache as a truly unrepentant and evil man. It also brings the movie full circle by connecting back to the beginning of the film.

So it brings into question: is this movie about who stole the gold from the outlaws or is it about the truth of each character or is it about revenge for the murder of a family? The movie itself suffers from not deciding what it wishes to be. It could’ve had all of them in it if it just chose to focus on one while addressing the others but it’s spread out its interest almost equally among all ideas.

Boone Collins (Jonathan Peacy) is another stand out character. Not quite the bold individual played by Eric Roberts but any intriguing con artist character with a lot of flair. Until Roberts shows up Peacy’s performance was scene stealing. The character was absolutely fascinating once you got his backstory. Kudos to the actor for elevating his part to noteworthy.

Special mention goes to Celeste Wall as Henriette Parker who is the only female in the gang. Maybe not award-winning but she gave us something worth watching. But neither she nor the character of Collins were main characters. JT or Bloody Tom’s son were more important but far less interesting

When not in flashback The Outlaws devolved into the characters shouting at each other. I get that are to be at each other’s throats but being at each other’s throats while shouting does not make for an interesting film. It just makes it loud. Loud when it goes on too long becomes irritating.

The acting is good. Not award-winning, but much better than it deserves for this. Each one is presented differently enough that you get a sense of who they are. In the short runtime it is a credit to the actors even if the parts as written do not shine.

At 70 something minutes there’s not too much to talk about in The Outlaws beyond what I’ve already mentioned. Not the greatest Western but a good enough Western.