Synopsis
Michael Flaherty (Craig Wasson), an American Vietnam veteran of Irish descent, returns to Belfast to join the cause of his grandfather, Seamus (Sterling Hayden). Soon he finds that he is not as welcomed in his home country as he imagined he would be. Even worse, he's the target of an IRA assassination plot designed to make the British forces look bad in order to elicit financial support from wealthy Americans.
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Cast
- Craig WassonMichael Flaherty
- Sterling HaydenSeamus Flaherty
- Patricia QuinnSiobhan
- Niall O'BrienEmmett Donovan
- T. P. McKennaJohn Russell
- Niall TóibínThe Farmer
- Frank GrimesTony Coyle
- Elizabeth BegleyMrs Cochran
- Bosco HoganFinbar Donovan
- Ray McAnallyMacWhirter
Recommendations
- 75
TV Guide Magazine
One of the better films concerning the tensions in Northern Ireland, THE OUTSIDER stars Craig Wasson as a young Irish-American inspired by his grandfather's patriotic tales of fighting the British years ago. - 70
The New York Times
The Outsider is vivid even if it isn't much of a character study, and energetic even though it's often clumsy. - 70
Variety
The Outsider represents the first attempt to get behind the incessant headlines and into the minds and motives at work on one of the longest-fought terrorist campaigns of the times - through an intelligent fictional story with an Irish setting. - 50
Time Out
More confusing than illuminating, it's a film which will rely more on its reputation than its achievement. - 50
Boston Globe
The "troubles" in Northern Ireland would seem to be an excellent dramatic vehicle: tension, violence, a people torn apart by religious, political, and economic differences. But writer-director Tony Luraschi turns it into a polemic. Speeches replace action and the dialogue is wooden. [14 Feb 2014, p.G31]
