Outlaw is not "wish-fulfilment" . It's a serious look at Vigilantism.

When Outlaw was released, a lot of people called it "wish-fulfilment" and "escapist". They saw it as a dumb, thoughtless action movie. But I do not agree with that assessment at all. In fact, I think Outlaw is quite the opposite. It takes a problematic look at the concept of vigilantism. In Outlaw, there is always doubt and confusion.

Had the movie been aiming for simple, crowd-pleasing escapism, the director would have played the movie more like shot-em-up flick.

Instead, I'd like to argue that Outlaw presents Vigilantism in a serious, realistic, and also problematic light.

For example:

*Some of the members of the gang are clearly not level-headed. Like the guy who comments about going after all the muslims in the country. It shows that some people who want to do vigilantism aren't so much into it for the "justice" part, as they are for the thrills and violence, basically being motivated by wrongly-guided stereotypes and racism.

*The scene where they debate to kill the captured guy or not. The black characters objections are correct, they do not have absolute proof if he's a bad guy or not. Thus the righteousness of their execution becomes questioned. Simultaneously, the film shows the consequences of them being wrong. Since he is an actual bad guy, the criminal repisal is real and brutal. Such problems are a fact of vigilantism.

*They fail! The Outlaw gang gets killed! Vigilantism is not as easy as it appears in the action movies.

Etc, etc.


Stuff like this you don't see in wish-fulfillment films. In escapist movies, these doubts and problems do not exist. Think about it, how many action movies have you seen that seriously juggle these issues? The director made this movie to display a serious study on how a vigilante group would perform, presenting its flaws and appliances. It's not at all a mindless promotion of these kinds of groups. And I found that very interesting.