Sometimes things are too ridiculous to be ignored. For instance: spaceman crash lands on Earth in Northern Europe during Viking times. He survives along with a space monster and this stranger ends up leading the Vikings to glorious victory with primitive, non-laser, swords. Yeah, that’s what I said. But for what it’s worth, Outlander works. Not completely, and definitely not smoothly, but it works. Solid production values, not-so-special effects and effective B-movie acting make the preposterous, possible in what could end up being one of those movies that one of those infamous-through-word-of-mouth video hits.

James Caviezel (who’s most famous for playing another traveller from the heavens: Jesus in The Passion of the Christ) plays Kainan, a space man on his way home when his ship crashes on Earth. Luckily for him, he looks completely human, so when a group of Vikings pick him up thinking that he’s the one that killed several of their warriors, he isn’t bow and arrowed on site. But the creature responsible for the deaths of several people, across numerous warring tribes, is a Moorwen, a danger that Kainan tries to describe to his primitive hosts as a dragon. But even eighth century Vikings aren’t that stupid, and are only convinced when the Moorwen waltzes into their village and starts tearing things up. And by things, I mean people.

Caviezel’s kind of jarring as an action star, but at least he has that Joey Tribbiani struggling-to-understand-what’s-going-on look working for him; a key acting tool in the “stranger in a strange land” acting tool kit. Typically this is the Karl Urban or Dwayne Johnson role, but Caviezel carries himself well enough. John Hurt brings insurmountable grace and presence to the part of the Viking king, doing one of those deep performances that makes you ask, what’s he doing here? Recent entrant in the Huston acting dynasty, Jack Huston, does an admirable, if not overly convincing job playing King-to-be, Wulfric, while the lovely and talented Sophia Myles is the feminist idol playing the tough, but assuredly post-modern, Viking princess Freya.

The action’s perfectly serviceable, if not overly convincing. The monster itself looks like some weird cross between the American Godzilla and the xenomorph from Alien, which is to say that it looks about as realistic as any CG monstrosity. Plus, I think we see a little too much of the monster for my taste. To a paraphrase an old movie line: if you can’t make something look right, show it in deep shadow. And it’s not that the film wasn’t engaging enough, but the story did seem to drag out past the point of being novel. Even the dumbest Vikings would recognize after a while that their tactics and weapons against the beast weren’t being that effective and would come to the conclusion that they needed more firepower. Or in this case: bigger swords. Basically, we get the same scene of the monster attacking five times before the blood thirsty Vikings actually get proactive.

But I did actually find the film sufficiently engaging to be worth a recommendation as long as you like mindless action with a side of ingenuity. While the action is kind of standard, certainly the script by Dirk Blackman and Howard McCain is not. Cliché-ridden though it may occasionally be, I at least appreciate the effort to do something new. Is it “Alien Vs Highlander” as I read one person indicating? Not really, it’s more like it’s trying to be “Beowulf from Space,” like some kind of gloriously, over-the-top graphic novel that nobody ever came up with. It’s not perfect, but it’s not really that terrible. It’s got serious B-movie potential, but I’d like to see how this thing plays on the big screen. A genuine surprise for actually surpassing even the lowest expectations.