Movie Review: ‘Outlaws’

Review by Bradley Smith

Outlaws follows a newly released leader of a motorcycle gang as he returns to reclaim his thrown just as his temporary replacement is readying for big changes to the group’s shady business. There’s motorcycles and intrigue and motorcycles and drugs and motorcycles and sex and did I mention motorcycles. If it wasn’t for the lack of a showcase on any specific brand of motorcycle, I would’ve thought this was a promotion; and a forgettable one at that.

Likely written for motorcycle enthusiasts, Outlaws is rather unimpressive from an outsider’s perspective. Roughly the first hour is just the revving of motorcycle engines mixed with seemingly random sex scenes and a little drug use that somehow threatens to send the recently released president of the gang back to jail. Somewhere in there, the writer, Matthew Nable (who also stars), squeezes in a thin plot about a leader and his subordinate and family that leads to a confrontation within the motorcycle gang. There were a few twists and surprises that I did not see coming, but nor did I care by the time they presented themselves.

The actors do their best given the material… mostly. Matthew Nable was wonderful… as Ra’s al Ghul on the CW’s Arrow… but in this he was barely noteworthy as the president of the Australian biker gang. Given American politics these days, it threw me every time he insisted that he was the president, not only because it made me think of our “president”, but also made me wonder why anyone would want to identify as that position. Our politics aside, it made me wonder if drug dealing biker gangs actually have presidents; though not curious enough to actually research it.

From what I can tell online, this film has been completed and shown in other countries for at least a year now. If you have already seen it, you have my sympathies. Otherwise, this one is not worth your time unless you just really love motorcycles. Definitely don’t take kids. While the sex/make-out scenes aren’t anything special, there was quite a lot of them and there is brief nudity.