The Outsider is a 2019 western about a railroad worker who finds himself on the wrong side of a group of corrupt lawmen.
There’s an argument to be made that perhaps the American Western is a genre running in circles, stories bound to a long-established set of standards that have become so entrenched in the collective mainstream that deviation would be impossible. Corrupt lawmen, violent revenge, gunfights in the street … we’ve seen it so often they are beyond cliché. And yet, there is an enduring quality to this kind of stability, one that director Timothy Woodward Jr.‘s understands well with his latest offering The Outsider, a dark and atmospheric take on the familiar that finds a few fresh steps on the path.
It’s the Old West and outside a dusty saloon town lives Jing Phang (Jon Foo) and his young newly pregnant wife Li Phang (Nelli Tsay). He works on the railroad but is harassed by local lawman James Walker (Kaiwi Lyman), son of Marshal Walker (Trace Adkins). James tosses Jing in jail for no reason other than his race, then sets his sights on poor Li, leading to a tragedy. Breaking out of his cell, Jing uses his considerable martial arts skills to exact some revenge, going on the hunt for James, putting Walker on his trail, he hoping his new tracker Chris King (Sean Patrick Flannery) can find Jing fast and save his troublemaking son from certain death.
The first twenty minutes of The Outsiders is genuinely distressing, Woodward Jr. – working from a screenplay Sean Ryan – finding the right balance of pace and tension as he sets up earned hatred and a coming hunt. We don’t know much if anything of the players as it begins, only their position in the community and the embedded racism therein. The showdown with Jing and the following attack on Li are slow and surgical, troubling and haunting, we learning through action what kind of man James is and how it paves the way for everything that follows. These are harrowing moments that don’t sensationalize the violence, only make it feel all that more authentic.
Maybe understandably, it’s not entirely sustainable, the film forced into the more narrow lanes the plot demands with James increasingly out of hand as his far bigger father tries desperately to keep him reigned in. Meanwhile, King’s posse, including Carlos (Danny Trejo) scour the countryside while Jing plans his next move. All of this has great potential yet the movie decides to keep it laid back when it really ought to kick in, long stretches of inaction keeping this more meditative than energetic.
That’s not all bad of course, the deliberate pacing lending it a weightiness that feels sort of right, the high themes mixed with predictable plotting finding just the right edge in keeping the whole thing ticking along. That’s made doubly so by a strong cast who don’t for a second go halfway in breathing some fleshy personality into these folks, with Adkins again a good fit for the genre and Flannery fun to watch. There’s not a weak link in the bunch.
The Outsider doesn’t have the production of a big studio release but nonetheless manages to scratch out a pretty convincing landscape for the tried and true story, even with a nice twist in those doling out revenge. While it’s a slower story, content to give its action some space, this is thoughtfully-made and very well acted. Recommended.