I’d heard rumors about this movie Outlander, a science fiction/Viking movie hybrid, starring the redoubtable Jim Caviezel. I’d heard some good things about it, so I rented it from Netflix, hoping I’d be able to recommend it to you, the discerning consumer.

Alas, I can’t honestly give it much of a boost.

What you’ve got here, essentially, is a cross between The Thirteenth Warrior and Predator. If you’ve seen those movies, frankly, I can’t think of much reason to watch this one. Unless you’re just keen to see a Viking ship in a movie, which is always worth the trouble (unless the movie is [ptui!] Beowulf and Grendel, which we hates, we does).

Caviezel plays Kainan, an interstellar traveler (a bit of dialogue suggests that his species “seeded” Earth, which accounts for his being human), whose spacecraft crashes in the ocean just off the coast of Norway, in the 8th Century. Kainan has been transporting a deadly alien predator, called a Morwen, and the crash allows it to escape and start wreaking havoc on the Norwegians, who assume they’ve been attacked by human enemies. This doesn’t incline them to treat Kainan, when they capture him, with much hospitality. Fortunately he is given a chance to prove himself by the king (John Hurt, whom it would never have occurred to me to cast as a Viking, but he’s surprisingly convincing. Easily the best performance of the movie). Gradually accepted by the Norse, Kainan takes the lead in the attempt to capture and kill the Morwen.

There’s a love story, involving a Viking princess named Freya (Sophia Miles), whose first appearance (rather predictably) shows her at sword practice, wearing some nonsensical kind of leather bikini armor. This was not a good sign, and indeed, the costuming was disappointing, from the historical accuracy point of view. The designers fell into the twin sins of sleeveless tunics and too much fur (the Vikings wore fur as trim, like everybody else in Europe. They were not cave men). The armor could have been worse. The helmets (when anybody bothered with them) weren’t bad, and most of the swords were immediately recognizable to any Viking reenactor, having been picked up off the rack from Museum Replicas of Atlanta. There were some double-bitted axes, though, which is a no-no, and a strange leather shoulder protector, like a gladiator (not a Viking) might have worn.

The Viking village (an anachronism; Norway didn’t have any villages in the 8th century, unless this compound was meant to be a very large farm, but there were too many buildings for one farm) looked pretty good. The regular houses were of authentic design, but the king’s great hall looked like a modern Lutheran cathedral somewhere in Scandinavia, Finland, maybe.

Character names could have been a lot better. There’s a Viking named Wulfric, which is an Anglo-Saxon name. Worse is a character named Boromir, which is, of course, pure Tolkien. And “Freya” is a goddess’ name.

But I can forgive a certain amount of inaccuracies if the story’s good (as witness The Thirteenth Warrior with all its sins). Sadly, Outlander didn’t work very well for me on that level. I felt, as I hinted above, that there was nothing here that hadn’t been done before, and better. Neither the script, the acting, nor the photography ever rose to the epic heights demanded by the theme.

On a theological level, there’s a Christian missionary (apparently an Irishman) on the scene, for no discernible reason, either historical or narrative. One suspects he’s just there (as was the one in Beowulf and Grendel) to demonstrate the impotence of the Christian God, though even that theme isn’t really much developed. Jim Caviezel is placed more than once in poses that seem intended to remind us of his famous role in The Passion of the Christ, but again, it’s not clear why.

All in all, a pretty predictable film. Cautions for language and violence.