Freed after a long spell in prison, a former G.I. of the WWII, joins the Yakuza who help him out of prison, navigating the dangerous criminal underworld.
The Outsider is Nick, and perhaps that's the film's most fatal flaw. We're never allowed near the guy, and Leto's not the type to draw you in or emote. He's too alien.
Can a gaijin ever be trusted like family, or will his motives ultimately be self-serving? It's an interesting question in a story that's otherwise completely devoid of interesting questions, but The Outsider is too enamored with its foreign star.
Designed to offer Western audiences the opportunity to see a Caucasian movie star, and a heartthrob one at that, in an unusual genre setting, The Outsider rarely manages to rise above its audience-baiting concept.
Dull, flavorless, and fundamentally incurious, "The Outsider" is a clueless misfire, the cinematic equivalent of a study-abroad student showing off the kanji forearm tattoo whose meaning he never bothered to learn.
If the film's not going to interrogate the politics behind its core premise of an army man's quest to out-Asian actual Asian men, it's scarcely worth telling at all.
