‘Outcome’: a comedy film about making amends falls flat for audiences

By John Hiett

Opening up to a 30% rating for both critics and audience members, it seems “Outcome” wasn’t received well by fans despite the movie having a stacked cast. Presenting itself as a dark comedy, the film “Outcome” follows Reef Hawk (Keanu Reeve), a 56-year-old actor who has spent five years turning his life around after overcoming a heroin addiction.  

An issue arrives however when his crisis lawyer, Ira Slitz (Jonah Hill), reveals that someone is blackmailing him with an unknown video from Hawk’s past. Thus, it’s up to Hawk to meet with everyone that he wronged in order to make amends while also figuring out who the blackmailer is. 

Now, I will admit that the premise did intrigue me when I saw the trailer; I think having to deal with the aftermath of a person’s actions rather than seeing them happen in real time over the course of a film hasn’t been done before. The film presented some good elements of how it’s never too late to change for the better and revisit some old chapters in your life to fix problems you created. However, I want to make it abundantly clear, that is all that is good about this movie for its entire eighty-four-minute runtime.

I first want to criticize one of the major parts of the film: the comedy. The majority if not all of the comedy falls flat in this film, since it either consisted of running jokes that completely overstayed their welcome, or were very out of touch and felt very forced.

Having acted as a variety of characters from Titan in “Megamind” to Peter Brand in “Moneyball,” Jonah Hill is a well-known Hollywood actor who tried his hand at directing, with his latest being “Outcome.” Hill tries to take a jab at cancel-culture, showing how unfair it is to certain celebrities who are very careful with their presence, with Hawk’s character embodying that exact sentiment.

On top of this, Hill also tries to act like he can show how absurd Hollywood is for caring about cancel-culture, so the movie enters this weird state of playing both sides. With all of this context, the movie and the jokes come across very tone-deaf as Hill is still a rich successful celebrity while trying to come across as a relatable audience member.

Another aspect I think deserves some criticism is how they develop Hawk over the course of the movie. Over and over again, we hear characters talk relentlessly about how Hawk was a very bad person before he changed, yet the movie doesn’t only want to be about his bad side and how he got better.

However, you can’t have a movie that’s about past character growth and making amends without showing a glimpse of how he was terrible. There were moments Hawk had certain outbursts or bits of dialogue that felt like they were hinting at parts of his terrible past that he supposedly had, but they never went anywhere.

One part of the film I’ll give some credit to is the color-grading, which definitely might not be for everyone. The entire film is overly saturated, which makes a lot of vibrant colors pop out and makes things look very lively compared to your standard film.

While it might be somewhat out of place for the film or has no clear purpose for looking this way, I think it at least softens the blow for how terrible this film is as it makes the experience slightly better for people trying to get through watching this. I will say, I do like films that push for more experimental color-grading as I think it makes the movie more unique and visually interesting as it goes away from the norm of modern-day movies that always use flat or dull colors.

Overall, I can’t recommend “Outcome.”Not only is it a very boring watch where nothing ever happens, but also there is legitimately no character progression or overall theme to be learned— adding to the frustrating experience of watching a movie that did in fact have some potential to stand out and be memorable.

“Outcome” is available to watch on Apple TV.

John Hiett is a senior biology major. He is passionate about any and all indie video games and loves getting coffee since starting college.

Images courtesy of Apple Studios.