The Outsider

Based on Colin Leinster's 1980 novel The Heritage of Michael Flaherty, director Tony Luraschi's same-year film adaptation is a dour drama that disproves Robert Frost's adage that good fences make good neighbors. Craig Wasson stars as Leinster's eponymous hero, who ships out to Belfast during the height of the Troubles after returning disillusioned and aimless from Vietnam with a taste for righteous action still hot in his mouth. Seeking to uphold the honor of his Irish roots, Flaherty enlists in the IRA to aid the cause of ridding the country of “invading” British militants and reinstate Ireland's independence from the United Kingdom. Starry-eyed from tales of familial valor and the prospect of having finally found his purpose, Flaherty's expectations are constantly dashed, whether it's being holed up in a safe house or facing the grim inevitability of having to execute British officials guerrilla-style, to say nothing of the bloodshed occurring just outside in the streets nearly every hour. Even his startup romance with a local mother (Patricia Quinn) comes with a bracing dose of reality as she constantly derides the violent tactics of the IRA, favoring a more peaceable, diplomatic approach. What Flaherty doesn't realize is that he is simply being used as a pawn. The Outsider suffers from a general lassitude that finds its root in Flaherty himself; he's a character who things happen to, rather than one who makes them happen. As such, moments of personal drama are fleeting or played too broadly, although the nationalistic conflict is effectively embodied in a handful of sequences that downplay hardships as miniscule as food rationing and as tragic as infanticide with a practiced weariness that matches the gray, rainy weather. Optional. (J. Cruz)