Outcome finds Keanu Reeves as a mid-fifties, two-time Oscar-winning movie star named Reef Hawk. He has been in the limelight his entire life, as the film opens with him, a six-year-old boy, tap-dancing and singing show tunes on the Johnny Carson show. Yet, he has taken the last five years of his public-facing life to pull back and seek solace in the midst of a crippling heroin addiction. But is it worse to hide your own frailties or accept the public backlash they might bring upon you? This is the question the movie struggles with in every way to try to answer.
It’s clear that Jonah Hill, the writer and director of the project, is using this as a vessel for his own Hollywood troubles, whatever those may or may not be. The Stutz (2022) and mid90s (2018) filmmaker also plays Hawk’s “crisis lawyer,” Ira, a manic, awkwardly styled, and unfunny character. He has previously helped the likes of several stars that have fallen prey to cancel culture, as noted with a monstrous portrait of Kanye West in his boardroom (unfunny) and a gigantic picture of Bill Clinton in his hallway (pretty funny). He calls upon Hawk when a damaging video of the actor is threatened to be released.
Thus kicks off the faux-apology tour for Reef and Hawk, taking action to try to figure out anybody that Reef has wronged who might want to release the persona-crushing video to the highest-bidding media outlet. Reef, along with his best friends Xander (Matt Bomer) and Kyle (Cameron Diaz), who are criminally underwritten and actively insufferable in their screen presence, hurls himself toward an introspective journey.
The idea of “victim capitalism” and how willing strangers are to defame those whose lives are on public display for all to see is something worth investigating. Although any time the movie pinpoints that very idea, Hill undercuts the thematic resonance with his frenzied energy as Ira. Or worse yet, can’t find an adequate way to state his true thoughts on the matter through the script. A script, mind you, that literally has the line “I love outlandish humor with my friends” baked into it. Outcome tries to identify the struggles movie stars face; however, it is out of touch with the common person. The film fails to locate that sweet spot and can’t even find an entirely concrete spot to land on, period.
What works in Outcome is the addition of a previous collaborator with Hill, Martin Scorsese. He plays Red Rodriguez, an older child star manager who works at the local bowling alley. His job, if done correctly, sees child stars go on to be successful and leave him in the dust. Reeves and Scorsese combine for the most emotionally potent dialogue in the film, with Scorsese offering tender insight into what it feels like to lose people he cares about. And for a character in Reef who is obsessed with Googling himself to see if anyone online has something bad to say about him, this rapport is the only one that feels authentic in the entire movie.
Outcome feels unable to put any real stakes on a topic that is, arguably, one of the most high-stakes situations of a famous person’s life. It rushes into the narrative of the expedition to find the blackmail suspect without taking the time to connect us to Reef’s humanity. It abandons the “why” at the heart of the movie. Maybe that’s by design, signaling an inherent distance between movie stars going through career-defining moments and the everyday people who think they understand what that feels like. If it is, it cripples the movie far more than it helps it.
For a film with a runtime of just 84 minutes, it feels like barely a movie, digressing often into Jonah Hill joking about pop culture censorship and Jussie Smollett. Directorially, it’s full of strange choices as well, the biggest being Reef’s CGI-laden ocean-front house that is anything but beautiful to look at.
Reeves, through his naturally enigmatic screen presence, proves himself as still one of the coolest, most authentic guys in Hollywood, contrary to the character he plays. He is seemingly the only person able to muster enough humanity in Outcome to even attempt to deliver something of moral resonance.
The rest of the ideas at play — being a good person, obsessing over public opinion, the frailty of cancel culture, and humanity’s willingness to treat those with money and fame obtusely — are found washed out to sea. There’s a reason this went straight to Apple TV with minimal marketing and hype. It’ll most likely quickly fade from the greater culture’s consciousness for the next thing, just the same way celebrity cancel culture itself operates.
Review Courtesy of Ethan Simmie
Feature Image Credit to Apple TV