Summary
Netflix’s Outlaws is a mad ride of sex, drugs, jealousy, friendship, and love for over 2 hours of runtime.
This review of the Netflix film Outlaws (2021) does not contain spoilers.
In the late 1970s, after the death of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, when Spain was slowly moving towards democracy, the rebellious youth rose to prominence with their free spirit and rawness. These groups of youth broke all the barriers of the society and brought the fresh air with their nothing to lose mindset leading to a mad world of bohemia. Netflix film Outlaws celebrates this free spirit of the youth of the late 70s in the mold of that era’s famous quinquina film genre.
Directed by Daniel Monzon, this film depicts the story of Nacho, a soft-spoken and bullied teenager, and his involvement with a new group of friends in a series of burglaries, heists, love, and more in 1978’s Girona.
Nacho aka Grafitas is a very shy and nervous boy, who does not have any friends and is being constantly bullied by other boys from his age group. At home also, he is quite shy to share anything with his parents lest they get him wrong. In this moment of abandonment, he stumbles upon young Tere and Zarco and with their encouragement, he joins their gang, which leads him to become a repressed young individual to a free-spirited rebel.
Played by actor Marcos Ruiz, Nacho is an everyman. He is not confident, nervous, and shy. He is an abandoned disturbed kid, who has no one to listen to. But after meeting with Tere and Zarco, his life alters and he has gotten the stronghold in his life. This transition of the character from a shy disturbed kid to a rebellious one with a nothing-matters mindset is portrayed beautifully by the actor. Subtly, he portrays the character with believability. His body language changes with time as he digs deeps into the character’s development with the time. He makes the character a human to relate with.
His love interest, Tere, played by Begona Vargas, is seductive yet vulnerable. She is the one who loves and cares for Nacho yet doesn’t commit herself to him. She is quite a believer in free love but has the most love for him in her heart. Her friend Zarco, played by Chechu Salgado is also quite protective towards Nacho. He also has a relationship with Tere leading the three to a love triangle with jealousy, lust, and belief.
Amidst these flawed characters, the characters of the police are quite underdeveloped and that leads to the thrills being half-baked. They get very little screen time and are treated as the stereotypical police (corrupt, loudmouth, and hostile) treatment in movies. I wish the writer gave more time to the development of these police characters.
With some thrilling action and adrenaline, with drugs, sex, and love, Outlaws is a mad ride of the nostalgia of the film genre depicting the rawness of young bohemians of the 1970s.
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