Fine cast fails to save "Outlander"

You can think about "Outlander" 16 different ways, and still arrive at the same conclusion: It just doesn't work.

Well, it might have worked if its makers had left well enough alone. A humanoid extraterrestrial named Kainan (James Caviezel) crashes his spaceship in Norway in the early eighth century. Now, right there you've got a movie: an alien among suspicious Vikings, who eventually come to regard Kainan as a hero when he demonstrates his mettle against an enemy kingdom.

But "Outlander" doesn't stop there. Turns out a monster called a Moorwen smuggled itself onto Kainan's ship and is now feasting on Vikings like so much chicken satay. Kainan can't convince a local king (John Hurt) and king-in-waiting (Jack Huston) the thing isn't just a big old bear, but they like him anyway.

Wait, there's more. The Moorwen is the last of a species wiped out by Kainan's people for purely selfish reasons, making the creature sympathetic and Kainan responsible for importing its wrath into our Iron Age. At this point, "Outlander" is officially convoluted.

Typically soulful and charismatic, Mount Vernon native Caviezel is in his character comfort zone as a seeker of redemption. He's good and, in fact, everybody's good, including Hurt, Huston, Sophia Myles as the king's feisty daughter and Ron Perlman as Hurt's raging rival. But they're all working for a lost cause.

Co-writer and director Howard McCain (who also co-wrote the screenplay for "Underworld: Rise of the Lycans," which opens today but did not screen in advance for review) attempts to anchor the story's loose logic with a lengthy, second-act scene in which everyone cooperates in building an impressive trap for the Moorwen.

Yet one watches it knowing, the whole time, it's not going to work. Nor does one want to see the Moorwen, as much a victim as anyone, disappear so easily.

Tom Keogh: tomwkeogh@yahoo.com