Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.5

The Baytown Outlaws Blu-ray Movie Review

Surprise! It's not horrible!

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 6, 2013

If there’s one thing Quentin Tarantino has taught the generation of fawning acolytes who have followed in his rather considerable wake, it’s that more is—well, more. Tarantino introduced the world to oversized characters spouting incredibly florid language (often about life’s minutiae) in hyperbolic events that careened through what seemed at times a completely formless, chaotic universe. That impression of chaos is misleading, of course, for Tarantino, for all his perceived excesses, is one tightly controlled writer and filmmaker. You may not agree with his writing or direction, but it’s hard to argue that he doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing. Unfortunately, a lot of Tarantino wannabes have come down the pike over the past couple of decades, aping Tarantino’s showy dialogue, near camptastic characters and overly arch plot machinations, emulators who often get the trappings down if not the foundation holding them up. The good news is that in this ever widening subgenre, co-writer and director Barry Battles surges to the head of this perhaps questionable class, delivering in The Baytown Outlaws a film that is much better than it has any right to be. The salient question will still remain for many: is that enough to make it any good? The film is provocatively in your face, decidedly un-PC, full of cartoonish characters and events, and so would seem perfectly prized to be a paradigmatic example of “Tarantino: The Next Generation”, but there are still signs that Battles hasn’t quite learned all of the Quentin-esque tricks he’ll need to master to assume the throne from the master. But that said, for all the squalid B-movie grindhouse efforts that have trundled down the pike over the past several years, there’s something to be said for a film as resolutely sure of itself—even if it really shouldn’t be all of the time—as The Baytown Outlaws is.

Things get off to a rootin’ tootin’ start in The Baytown Outlaws as the apparently slack jawed Oodie brothers Brick (Clayne Crawford), McQueen (Travis Fimmel) and Lincoln (Daniel Cudmore) show up at a dilapidated shanty and demand entrance, claiming to be the law. The residents inside who don’t seem likely to be making the social register anytime soon themselves refuse, and an incredibly bloody shootout ensues, leaving the residents dead (or dying) and the brothers feeling momentarily triumphant—until one of them notices a letter on the kitchen counter and realizes they’ve come to the wrong address. Whoops. It’s a typically Tarantino-esque sequence, made even more so by Brick’s intentionally arch monologue recited over a dying man whom Brick eventually puts out of his misery with nary a blink (and indeed when he isn’t even really looking).

For quite a while after Desperate Housewives debuted, Eva Longoria was an “It” Girl with some Latina spice factor, something that faded over the ensuing years of the series and, more recently, with the arrival of Sofia Vergara on Modern Family, who seems to have taken over that particular mantle. Longoria is still top billed along with Billy Bob Thornton on the cover of this Blu-ray, but the fact is both of these actors are in little more than cameo roles here. Longoria plays Celeste, a woman desperate to retrieve her disabled godson from her vicious gangster ex- husband Carlos (Thornton), and who, after witnessing the carnage the Oodie brothers create in the film’s opening sequence, is sure she’s found just the right people to make this happen.

In the meantime it becomes clear that the Oodies are actually informal deputies of sorts for their town’s well meaning if circumspect Sherriff, Henry Millard (Andre Braugher), though the boys’ incompetence at gunning down a bunch of semi- innocent bystanders has put Millard in an awkward position, especially since a kind of smarmy ATF agent named Reese (Paul Wesley) has shown up and is asking a few too many uncomfortable questions about how Millard has been governing his little neck of the Alabama woods. That makes Celeste’s offer (as well as a rather copious amount of cash) all the more interesting to the boys, since it will get them out of state for a while and provide them a way to cash in with hopefully a minimum of fuss and bother, something that their collaboration with Millard hasn’t yet provided.

That sets up the longish second act of the film, where the Oodies track down Carlos and the missing boy, who turns out to be wheelchair bound and perhaps mentally challenged. The Oodies manage to slaughter all of Carlos’ henchmen, but of course Carlos survives to fight another day, at which point Battles starts channeling not just Tarantino but also Russ Meyer and George Miller courtesy of various gangs that Carlos sends to deal out some heavy handed justice on the Oodies, groups that include buxom biker chicks (hence the Meyer reference) and, later, a bunch of Mad Max-esque warriors in an armored truck (hence the Miller reference).

Believe it or not, Battles actually handles the bulk of the film with a fair degree of panache, including the admittedly silly and completely over the top series of combatants which the Oodie brothers end up fighting. But the film takes an almost fatal left turn late in the going both with the final set of antagonists (Native Americans this time) and when the incapacitated state of the boy they’ve rescued leads to some uncharacteristically weighty discussions that completely change the heretofore rascally playful tone of the film. As an Tarantino fan will tell you, philosophical discussions in movies like Baytown Outlaws really need to be limited to such things as the relative strengths of the Whopper versus the Big Mac, not whether a Divine Presence who is supposedly omnipotent would allow bad things to happen to good people.

The Baytown Outlaws Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Baytown Outlaws is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Phase 4 Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.40:1. If the film's overall generally surprising amount of vigor isn't enough for you, this high definition presentation is uncharacteristically crisp and well defined for such a low budget affair. Though Battles and his DP Dave McFarland have intentionally radically color graded much of this film, to the point where asphalt roads are blue and skies are gray, even on the sunniest and clearest of days. A lot of the film is bathed in an ugly yellow hue which nonetheless serves the subject matter quite well. Fine object detail pops very well throughout the film, and while colors can't really be called "accurate", they're often quite robust and well saturated. The film tends to look a bit soft in some of the dimmest interior sequences, but the bulk of this high definition presentation is unexpectedly sharp.

The Baytown Outlaws Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Well, folks, we evidently have a new audio codec to contend with, if we're to believe the keepcase and slipcover of The Baytown Outlaws, for according to those sources of information this film features a Dolby 5.1 DTS track. It never ceases to amaze me that there aren't better copy editors at several of these smaller labels (I regularly see even major star named misspelled, as well as embarrassing grammatical errors sprinkled throughout the plot summaries). That said, what's actually here is a standard lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mix. It's perfectly serviceable, and in fact rather boisterous almost all of the time, but Blu-ray consumers are going to be pretty disappointed that a film this stuffed with outrageous sound effects and LFE hasn't been granted a lossless audio option. Dialogue is fairly clear (though some of the "good ol' boy" accents get a bit thick, and unfortunately there are no subtitles to help decipher what's bein said), the rock 'em, sock 'em score sounds fine and the mix is well prioritized within its lossy context.

The Baytown Outlaws Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (1080p; 2:00)


• Behind the Scenes Feature Part 1 (480i; 14:25) is a pretty standard EPK-fest replete with the requisite interviews, behind the scenes footage and snippets from the film.


• Behind the Scenes Feature Part 2 (480i; 8:18) is more of the same.

The Baytown Outlaws Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Color me absolutely shocked: when I saw the cover of this Blu-ray and read the plot summary, I kind of groaned internally and thought I was in for yet another "Tarantino lite" outing. Well, this is indeed "Tarantino light" in any number of ways, but the fact is I greatly enjoyed The Baytown Outlaws for about 7/8 of its running time. The film makes a few stunning missteps along the way, but overall this is rather smartly written, well performed and really well directed by Barry Battles, who is a talent to watch. This Blu-ray offers excellent video, though most will probably be upset that there's only lossy audio on this release. Still, against all odds, The Baytown Outlaws comes Recommended.