Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Outlaws’ on Showtime, About The Power Vacuum Atop A Violent Aussie Biker Gang

Originally released in 2017 under the title 1%, the Australian biker gang movie Outlaws (Showtime) was snapped up by A24 at that year’s Toronto International Film Festival before undergoing a name change and starting its run through the streamers. 

OUTLAWS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: In the Western Australian city of Perth, Paddo (Ryan Corr) has stepped up to run the Copperheads biker gang while its president, Knuck (Matt Nable), serves a three-year prison beef. And Paddo’s done well, expanding membership and filling the club’s coffers to the point that a new money laundering setup is necessary to translate ill-gotten gains into legit world earnings. Knuck, with his biceps rippling and the MC’s initials tattooed on his skull, is set to be released, and plans to take up his rightful place as king of the Copperheads with the support of his wife Hayley (Simone Kessell). Paddo’s girlfriend Katrina (Abbey Lee), meanwhile, pushes her man to retain the influence they’ve worked so hard to cultivate. He’d like to, though he knows Knuck will be a tough nut to crack. Paddo also has Skink (Josh McConville) to worry about, his intellectually disabled kid brother who he’s always furiously protected.

When Skink crosses Sugar (Aaron Pedersen), leader of the Devils MC, Paddo cleans up his brother’s mess. But by now Knuck is free, and decidedly against any of his vice president’s financial scheming, with Sugar or anyone else. He’d rather strut around the clubhouse, conduct violent initiation rites on MC hopefuls, and generally return the Copperheads to status quo. But one thing has changed since Knuck was in prison, and that’s the activation of his sexual urges for men. Hayley senses it, even if she won’t admit it, and Knuck acts on it, roughly taking a wide-eyed nominee for his own. For Knuck, sex is just another form of domination, a means of validating his outwardly tough, inwardly fragile male ego. And factional maneuvering swirls as the Copperhead rank and file pick sides in the battle for MC top dog.

A showdown looms. Katrina likes the taste of power she’s had with Paddo running things. Hayley recognizes that ambition, and sees it as a threat to her perch as the MC’s queen. Katrina also likes Sugar’s offer of a financial partnership with the Copperheads, a partnership that doesn’t include Knuck or Hayley. And Paddo just wants to let it play out, wait for the right opening. But another mess made by Skink puts pressure on all of these moving parts, and the guns come out as everything goes to shit.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? If we’re talking violent Australian subcultures, look no further than Romper Stomper (1992), featuring a very young and very skinny Russell Crowe as the leader of a neo-Nazi gang in suburban Melbourne. And speaking of Melbourne, there’s also Animal Kingdom, David Michod’s powerful 2010 drama about the ruthless crime family who calls that city home.

Performance Worth Watching: Aaron Pedersen only has a few scenes as Sugar, boss of the Devils MC, but they’re well worth the price of admission. Sugar is a guy who seems to sweat gobs of blood — when we meet him, he’s forcing a murder on a lowly MC soldier — and Pedersen puts every bit of that moral vacancy into his sick grin and flashing eyes. (Pedersen was also great as Detective Jay Swan in the 2013 Australian film Mystery Road, a scorched earth neo-Western that spawned a sequel and spin off limited series.)

Memorable Dialogue: Knuck, the MC president fresh from a three-year stint in stir, spends his first few days on the outside reasserting his dominance with salty tough guy speak. After he breaks a beer bottle over the head of the rival gang leader who tried to horn in on his territory, Knuck offers a deliciously specific threat. “If I ever catch you talking to any of my men about business, I’ll tie a dishwasher around your ankles and drop you in one of your billabongs.”

Sex and Skin: The Copperheads’ gang compound includes a strip club, with the usual salaciousness and grinding. Knuck and Hayley also sleep together upon his release from prison, but Knuck is secretly a changed man. On the inside, he was roughly, violently hooking up with his cellmate. Once out, he dominates and then rapes David, an impressionable young MC nominee.

Our Take: With its shots of thundering motorcycles traveling en masse, tatted-up and scarred beardos stitched up in MC leathers, and all of the casual bloodshed and coarse attitudes that come with the territory, Outlaws definitely sets a vivid scene for its biker gang power struggle. There’s barely a citizen anywhere in this criminal world. The action cuts from the Copperhead compound, to inside a prison, to a dingy gang-affiliated bar, and back to the MC clubhouse and the roaring bonfire where carded-up members take turns beating the shit out of guys who want to join. Paddo and Katrina are playing house, with Skink rounding out their little de facto family. But they know the gang and the status and inclusion it represents are their real family, and that certainty sets off the violence that was always going to be the resolution. These people don’t know how to do anything else, and subtlety isn’t in their vocabulary.

Outlaws itself knows very little about subtlety — it hews closely to the roughshod path of genre filmmaking. But there are dimensions to these mean-living characters, too, and that’s thanks to some fine work from its cast, many of whom have landed some serious credits since this film first appeared in 2017. Ryan Corr, as the conflicted gang VP Paddo, will next be seen in HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon, where he’ll play the righteously-named Ser Harwin “Breakbones” Strong. Matt Nable (Knuck) played Ra’s al Ghul on the CW’s Arrow for two seasons, and Abbey Lee (Katrina) was in Mad Max: Fury Road and Lovecraft Country. Of note also in Outlaws? Its searing, mood-setting soundtrack, with appearances by Swans, Godflesh, and The Birthday Party. Having Nick Cave yowling “I am the king!” as your film’s central battle finds its bloodsoaked end is the appropriate way to close out an Australian biker gang movie.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Movies about biker gangs are a genre inside a genre, and Outlaws puts its own boot on the neck of this leathery, lived-in material.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges

Where to watch Outlaws