Outlander

Posted May 24, 2012 by Speed - 0 comments

It’s 709AD when a space ships crashes onto Earth. Kainan, the seemingly only survivor, manages to escape the vessel before it sinks in a lake and immediately sets up a homing beacon that should send possible rescue teams his way. When he wanders around, he finds a nearby village that seems to be completely destroyed and all inhabitants have disappeared. Before he can investigate, however, he gets captured by Wulfric, one of the elite warriors that defend the Viking territory ruled by King Rothgar.

The Vikings believe Kainan is responsible for the massacre and are afraid that the leader of the village, the ferocious Gunnar, will hold them responsible for the massacre and launch a counter-attack. However, seeing that the Vikings aren’t responsible for the village’s demise, Kainan realises he wasn’t the only survivor of the crash of his ship but that also a so-called Moorwen must have survived and is now out to kill everyone…

Sound and Vision:
The image quality isn’t really special and when compared to modern DVDs it’s pretty similar. So why get the Blu-ray then? Good question as when comparing this with other Blu-rays it comes short a bit. The levels of black clearly need some work and also some dirt and scratches are still present. Also the cuttin of the movie isn’t perfect as there’s a scene where you clearly see a guy passing by in the back while in the next shot you see him arriving again.

The sound on the other hand does a nice job with a good DTS-HD track that brings forth some good use of the surround speakers and subwoofer while dialogues are crisp and crystal clear at all times.

Extras:
None

Conclusion:
Outlander is a decent budget production that combines Beowulf with Predator and only lacks Angelina Jolie as the female lead. In fact, the script seems to have been taken completely from the last Beowulf movie, added with a small sci-fi element. The shot of Shield Hall in both movies has a remarkable resemblance, but when looking at the names of the kings in both films (Rothgar vs Hrothgar) it’s clear there’s more than just coincidence at play here.

Still, the story is entertaining, the effects are reasonably decent (for not being a big budget production) and the acting is good. The downer of this Blu-ray is the absense of extras and the less-than-optimal image quality.

Overall: you may want to rent this one before considering purchase. Or wait to see if there’s ever a new release that improves the image quality and adds some decent extras.

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