Film: Outrage

One of tonight's tv films sounded vaguely interesting, so I ended up watching Outrage, in which Rob Lowe is an upstanding citizen who finds himself targeted by a group of malicious, wealthy, self-entitled, layabout teenage boys. Boo hiss, we all know where that's going, huh?

It all starts when he's driving by as they're breaking into a car. They spin a good enough story that he leaves them alone. They also note his license plate, find his car afterwards (he lives nearby), break into that, get his license and registration and therefore his address.. and so his harassment begins. He has a pregnant (and nervy) wife, which makes things worse.

This would have been so much better if it had followed some particular conventions. Firstly, he's not squeaky clean himself - seems he has anger management issues, and his wife's friend thinks she'd be better off without him. Secondly, only one of the teens is a verifiable sociopath - the others are just along for the ride, and quickly get squeamish. So the film quickly deteriorates into a 1-1 battle of wits between Rob Lowe and the sociopath. Nothing to say about society then- apart from being rather critical of lawyers who get the guilty off, while the innocent have to pay. I see it started life as a tv movie - and it shows. What the hey, it killed a couple of hours.

What's on Mubi could be relevant for Saturday, as Meetup's only offerings at the moment for that day are in person (which I can't yet get to, with travel restrictions), or on BBC's iPlayer, which I can't access from abroad. If I'm back on Mubi, the next-highest rated offering is Woman at War, an Icelandic film about a woman whose environmental activism may threaten her ability to adopt a child.