Outside the Law – and Just Outside the Realm of Strong Filmmaking

Attempting to put aside my serious judgment and hatred of using “blackface, yellowface” or any type of racist makeup to allow white movie stars to play these roles that could just as easily be played by the actual people of the race they are attempting to portray… Tod Browning’s Outside the Law still has a lot of faults outside of this that makes it difficult to fully enjoy the film beyond that. It’s not a bad film by any means, but it’s a weak one for sure and if not for the strong performances and intensity of some key scenes, it would be nowhere near the rating for which I give it.

After her reformed kingpin father, “Silent” Madden is wrongfully sentenced to prison after a scheme by master criminal Black Mike Sylva (played with rugged authority by Lon Chaney in a dual-role where he also plays an Asian servant named Ah Wing for some reason I can’t comprehend whatsoever…), Molly Madden (Priscilla Dean) works together with Black Mike’s right-hand man (played by Wheeler Oakman) to take him down. While the plot works for about two-thirds of the film, there is this unfortunately large chunk of the mid-section that is dedicated to both Dean and Oakman sitting in a room hiding out from police where the schmaltz and "convenience" is played up to a tee which takes away from a good amount of the intensity that had been built up to that point.

It’s not until Chaney’s Black Mike (pictured left) makes an appearance toward the last twenty minutes that the film finds new life once more and it leads to a shoot-out that, if not for the damaged quality of the film that made most of it almost incomprehensible, would have been very intense.

While I understand both that it’s unfair to rate a film based solely off of the standards of its time (the racist non-casting of Asian actors) and that I can’t poorly rate a film due to its film reels’ unsuccessful transition to modern times, I can still say the film would have easily not been worth the time if not for the strong performances of everyone. While Chaney and E. Alyn Warren (who plays the Confucius-like Chang Lo) both unnecessarily play Asian characters, Warren still plays Chang Lo quite well and with respect to the character and his race, while Chaney is quite pointless and over-the-top as Ah Wing, but gives a remarkably fierce turn as the thuggish Black Mike.

Beyond those two, the two leads (pictured right) – Dean and Oakman – manage to make the consistent banter that fills up a large portion of the film work as they show off their acting range from sweet to intense to devious – just like any good thief.

Without any of these performances, however, I would say Tod Browning (popularly known for his 1931-32 one-two punch of Dracula and Freaks) would have had a humungous flop on his hands and not have had the career he wound up having. This is not to undermine his strengths as a director as when characters were not sitting in rooms talking, he still crafted some suspenseful action sequences (primarily shoot-outs) and he really excelled when all of his characters were in play together. While it feels like 1920 had little to offer outside of the generic, each one of the films reviewed so far – including this one – showed potential for directors or stars who would go on to quite a bit of fame over the decade and even over onto the 1930s. Maybe without the racist makeup/ casting, perhaps their films improve (after all, he did remake this film with the powerful Edward G. Robinson in Chaney’s role without requiring him to play an Asian character too!). So perhaps they do learn after all. At least it’s not as bad as Birth of a Nation…


5.5/10