Vikings, Spacemen, and Aliens.

Outlander begins with a space ship crashing on Earth around 700AD and two humanoids escape from the crash. One survives, one doesn't. The survivor, Kainan, played by Jim Caviezel learns the local language from his ships computer and then picks up his weapon and goes searching the area for something. He happens upon a destroyed village with no survivors or bodies but signs of a complete slaughter at the same time as a search party from another Viking village who believes he is the killer. They soon realize that something larger and much more dangerous is lurking out there in the woods and enlist the strange outlander's help to hunt it and kill it.Half of this movie seems like it should be a Sci-Fi channel Sunday night feature. From the king's (John Hurt) relationship with his daughter Freia, (Sophia Myles) sparing with her as he tries to convince her to marry Wulfric (Jack Huston) who wants to be king but is too hot headed. The character's relations with each other were only wedged into the movie in a failed attempt to mak you care about them which did nothing but lengthen the time between the good portions of the movie when they were fighting and being attacked by the creature known as a Morwin. The second half of the movie is exactly that and there it blossoms into a decent monster movie where it is hunting them as they are hunting it. Where danger lurks behind every corner and crevice. The movie does a good job with a few other things as well. For one it sets up Freia as a strong female character and doesn't turn her into a damsel in distress even toward the climax of the movie. The twist of the movie is presented to us in the very beginning with Kainin being from space. He loses his weapon early on and instead of making him into the know it all character sent to lead the savages to victory he blends in with them and uses what they have. Also it avoided what seemed like the inevitable love triangle that many lesser movies would have ran with. The CG for the creature wasn't the best but overall the movie did come together in the second half and is worth checking out if you'd like to see something that could have ended up on an extended cable channel transcend itself. B/7/73.