The Outsider (2019)

Netflix has at least two movies on there right now with this title. This one is trash, but the other one has Jared Leto in it, who I think is also trash, so probably a wash there.

This one is a very muddled, poorly paced Western about how a deputy sets his sights on the wife of one of the Chinese laborers in town. He and one of the other deputies try to get Jing to pick up a gun so they can kill him in "self-defense", and when he refuses, they just pistol whip him and say he did it anyway. Then, while he's locked up, the deputy rapes Li, and is such a dumbass, he chokes her to death in the process. Of course, because she's Chinese, and he's the federal marshal's son, nothing is going to happen unless Jing does it himself. And Jing is an accomplished martial artist, naturally. Or else all these cowboys are just completely incompetent fighters, getting their asses beat in a 4-on-1 fight by a guy who looks like he weighs 130 soaking wet.

With their regular tracker dead, the marshal enlists and drunk, suicidal tracker named Chris to help, but Chris quickly enough decides to throw in with Jing. Not that he's much help as the man carries around a revolver with one bullet in it, and can't hit the broad side of a barn. Seriously, he misses the twerpy sadist deputy with three rifle shots from maybe 10 feet away, with the guy is perfectly framed in a doorway. Misses him badly. I'd have to try to miss a shot that badly. You could argue he's doing it purposefully, because he figures it's Jing's right of vengeance, but he doesn't do any better in the climactic (I use the term loosely) gunfight at the end.

The movie spends far too much time on the marshal and his crappy kid. There are at least 4 confrontations in this movie between the two of them where the marshal repeats that he knows his son has no good in him, and he should have put him down years ago, but 'I made yore muther a deathbed promise ta protect yu.' Great, telling us that once was sufficient. Either the marshal continues to do nothing, and you've explained why, or he finally does do something and we're pleasantly surprised. There's also one scene of the marshal talking with some guy in a beat up hat about needing the Chinese to finish the railway sooner for reasons I thought was going to lead to something bigger. It does not.

The movie is fond of shots where the camera is either looking directly into the barrel of a gun, or a character is looking directly at us while speaking to someone else. Such as when Chris, during an awkward dinner with the marshal, is asked if he thinks Jing will stop killing. After replying sure, just as soon as said dipshit is in the ground, he leans toward the dipshit and asks him, and now us, if we would stop if our wife was raped and killed, would we, huh?

I'm sorry, were the filmmakers under the mistaken impression I was not on Jing's side in this? I was on his side before I even realized what the dipshit intended, when I thought he and the other deputy were just a couple of power-drunk redneck assholes hassling Jing because they don't like the Chinese. Believe me, makers of The Outsider, I am fully on board with Jing killing the deputy, and his buddy, and the marshal, and all the people in town who stood by and did nothing (which would include Chris initially), and then burning the fucking town down. Then salting the earth so nothing will ever grow there again and people will just avoid until the end of all time. You do not need your cheap camera technique to try and get me on Jing's side.