“The Outrage” is a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s “Rashomon”, as a western. It follows the original story reasonably closely, and while it is not as good as “Rashomon” it does have a lot to recommend it. The story involves a crime, where a woman is raped and her husband killed. Difficulties arise at the trial, where each person tells a different version of events.

The story is told in flashback, when travellers congregate at a railway station. There is a preacher (William Shatner), a prospector (Howard Da Silva), and a travelling con artist (Edward G Robinson). The con artist has only just arrived and knows nothing about the trial, so when he hears about it he begs for more details.

There are three people involved in the crime – Lawrence Harvey and Claire Bloom, playing a husband and wife who are travelling, and a Mexican bandit played incongruously by Paul Newman. The end result is that the woman is raped and the man is killed. What is in question is how it happened. The different versions of the story told by each person is not as simple as them telling lies. People slant events to make themselves look good, make someone else look bad, or to cover for something they have done.

For example, the bandit knows he’s going to be hanged for this no matter what he says. Instead of denying everything, he tells a tale about how clever he has been to lure the couple away from the road, how manly he is to rape the woman (in his estimation), and how noble he is to fight the man fairly. The woman says the bandit left without hurting her husband, but he abused her once she had untied him, blaming her for being raped. She stabbed him with the Aztec knife and then ran. For her, she’s defended herself against a horrible accusation on the heels of a horrible assault. The husband (according to a native American who came across him while dying) says he took his own life to save his honour. These people lie to themselves as much as to the court, painting themselves in what they regard as a better light. The fourth and final version comes from a third party eye witness, the prospector, who would appear on the face of things to have no reason not to give an objective account. Only the Aztec knife was never recovered, and it seems the man stole it. So his account, which is the most bizarre and paints the other three characters in an almost comical light, cannot be trusted either.

This film is about human motivation. Human pride and vanity, guilt, shame, lust, and cowardice all take a hand in these different stories. They render the truth entirely subjective, as everyone speaks from their own perceptions and motives.  While all accounts agree that the bandit raped the woman, only the bandit himself says he killed the husband. By the end of the film the audience is no better off than at the beginning. How did the husband die? Take your pick.

“The Outrage” is hard not to judge in comparison to the original movie. As such it is a decent remake but not a marvellous one. It has a solid cast and they all do their best with the material given. I believe, however, that the director might have done better not to make a by-the-numbers remake, as some variation might have made the film more solidly his own. It is definitely worth a watch, however, whether or not you have seen “Rashomon.”