Apple TV flick ‘Outcome,’ starring Keanu Reeves, is ‘awkward, clumsily maudlin, and shot like a fever dream’ – NYT
Apple TV’s “Outcome” is a dark comedy that centers on Reef Hawk (Keanu Reeves), a beloved Hollywood star who must dive into the depths of his hidden demons after he is extorted with a mysterious video that’s sure to shatter his image and end his career.
Keanu Reeves stars in “Outcome,” which premiered on Friday, April 10 on Apple TV.
Apple TV’s “Outcome” is a dark comedy that centers on Reef Hawk (Keanu Reeves), a beloved Hollywood star who must dive into the depths of his hidden demons after he is extorted with a mysterious video that’s sure to shatter his image and end his career. With the support of his lifelong besties Kyle (Cameron Diaz) and Xander (Matt Bomer), along with his crisis lawyer Ira (Jonah Hill), Reef embarks on a soul-searching journey to make amends with anyone he could have possibly wronged in hopes of identifying the blackmailer. Co-writer and director Hill looks to bring a unique lens to Reef’s wild but spiritually cleansing, nostalgic, and eye-opening trip down memory lane, where confronting his past might be the only way to rescue his future.
In “Outcome,” Keanu Reeves plays a washed-up movie star who has been a noxious narcissist and addict — in private. For years, his team has been protecting his public persona as the nicest guy in Hollywood.
But the second part mostly feels like a limply added asterisk, as if the film, directed by Jonah Hill, realized halfway through that it had to explain its miscast of Reeves as a notorious jerk. That’s a big enough misfire, but it’s just the first in “Outcome,” a film that is shot like a fever dream and written like a puckish remake of “Jay Kelly.”
Reeves isn’t able to rise above the material, but he’s not really given much to begin with; most of the film consists of its eclectic cast (Cameron Diaz as the best friend; Martin Scorsese as the former manager) talking at Reeves while he sits in dejected silence until he finally lashes out in a stilted, histrionic fit. The most extreme case is Hill, who plays Reef’s crisis lawyer, and seems to be doing a misguided twist on Tom Cruise’s demented executive in “Tropic Thunder.”
“Outcome” is an altogether bizarre turn from Hill as a director: His previous films (“Mid90s,” “Stutz”) were, even amid some stylistic cribbing, clearly borne out of a personal, considered worldview. Here he’s made a slapdash satire of modern celebrity culture that is awkward where it wants to be acerbic and clumsily maudlin where it wants to be meaningful.
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