The Outsider

Photo credit: www.imdb.com

The Outsider was at my Netflix viewing list but for some reason I didn't get around to it. I got this sense that  this film would not be to my liking. Sometimes I get this sense and I watch the film and I love it and this thankfully was one of those occasions. I only decided to watch because I started to re-read (listen to) Shogun and thought it would be a nice accompaniment. The story of a gaijin in the land of the rising sun. However Nick, our lead character is not Blackthorne, at all. We meet the guy in prison and I immediately think him wrongly accused or being victim of fate or something. Because he saves a guy from death by others' hands and because he is acted by Jared Leto who looks adorably cute and vulnarable. But as the film progresses we see that this guy was rightly prisoned since he is a psycho. As crazy as the rest of the yakuza he willingly joins to. The guy he saved is one of the second in commands and georgeous (acted by Asano Tadonobu who has aged amazingly well) and in 1950s Osaka he rises due to his violent tendencies and know when to shut up and when to cut his finger in apology. He also falls for the sister of Asano. But of course there is an antagonist (in a film filled with baddies he is even worse than them) and Nick has to deal with him. I loved the clean cinematography, the performances of everyone, especially Jared Leto's who was not really so cute after half an hour into the film. The tattoos were cool too, probably the only thing good about yakuza.