The Outsider is a mixed bag. At it's core it is solid film making. Alas it's story and sociopathic characters we all have seen a million times before. And even worse you can tell how this film ends within the first 20 minutes. Yawn.While the acting throughout is pretty satisfying, the Outsider as a whole features zero originality, and more conceptual holes than Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow V8 Ford.

White-Man-in-Japan is practically its own sub-genre of movies (James Coburn's Shogun, Black Rain, The Last Samurai, 47 Ronin, The Wolverine), and all of those movies I mentioned are better movies than The Outsider, which follows the same basic pattern as those movies, but with less interesting acting, set-scenes, characters, and motifs. If you've never seen a Yakuza movie before, or know nothing about them, this might be a decent introduction, but even then, you might as well stick with the works of "Beat" Takeshi Kitano and Takashi Miike, who have a better understanding of the culture and the ideas within. Political correctness aside, The Last Samurai is just a more well-made movie that embodies this concept with better action and a story that makes more sense, whether or not the white-visitor who masters-everything storyline is tired out or not. If you're going to do that concept, do a good job with it. This movie has an underwritten story with a main character that has no backstory, interesting traits, or motive, and is somehow not investigated or extradited back to the US despite being an AWOL soldier in post-WW2 Japan. They dangle a possibly interesting plot-thread with a former member of his unit wondering if he's in Japan to escape a court-martial, and do nothing with it, just like how nothing is done with the good actors, sets, and costumes, which are all fine. I tried giving The Outsider a chance, but there's better WMiJ movies out there, better Yakuza films, and better Jared Leto and Tadanobu Asano performances out there.

I wanted to like this movie. Jared Leto has turned in a lot of great performances, and the Yakuza subject matter is not often seen in American cinema. Leto tried his best, but the movie just falls flat.Positives first. Leto's performance is pretty strong, and the film is mostly well shot. The dialogue scenes mostly stick to shot-reverse shot, but there are a few good wide shots of the cityscape and the Japanese countryside that look good. The story is engaging at least: Nick Lowell (Leto) is imprisoned in Japan during the American occupation, and later joins the Yakuza after helping out one of its members, with the film exploring his rise through the ranks.Other than that, though, there's not much else here. The rest of the cast is just average. The writing is honestly awful. Dialogue is half-assed in Japanese and English, scenes don't flow together, and it drags... oh man does this movie drag. The 10 minute opening scene feels like 20 minutes, and by the time you hit the hour mark the movie feels like it's been on all day. The editing is to blame here also. The movie is not paced well, and there are a ton of shots of people sitting, driving or walking for nonvisual storytelling that could be cut in half and still get their point across. The movie also looks ugly. It has a dark color palette, which you would think would work in a crime movie but here it doesn't because the lighting doesn't match the color tones. The movie is lit like a TV show. There are also some baffling creative choices that make no sense within the context of the film. Leto's love interest, for example, has an American accent when she speaks English, even though she's lived in Japan her whole life. Then a plot twist involving one of Nick's old army platoon members comes out of nowhere, and is dropped just as quickly.The movie really needed a page one rewrite to fix the dialogue and pacing issues, and with a better director and supporting actor who have the right feel for the movie's tone, it could have been a lot better (David Fincher and Ken Watanabe immediately came to my mind, but even a pair with half of their abilities could have improved this movie). It's definitely not the worst crime movie I've ever seen, but it's definitely one of the most dull and disappointing. I wouldn't recommend it except as background noise while you focus on something else.

I was very excited to watch this movie because I loved the premise and the reviews here recommended it. Boy was I let down.The movie is slow, but not in a good way. It's not slow to immerse you in the old world of Japan, or even to give you some sort of visceral feel. It's just slow and then like clockwork something very violent happens. I don't even understand why he's so violent. There's just no soul behind anything.It is predictable, which is not the worst thing in the world but combine that with a slow pace and uncompelling characters and it's another fatal flaw.Gratuitous violence began to make the movie a bit comical.