Critical reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Outcast holds an approval rating of 5% based on 22 reviews, with an average rating of 3.2/10. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned Outcast a score of 33 out of 100 rating based on 7 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".
Glenn Kenny of RogerEbert.com centered his review on the performances, primarily that of Nicolas Cage. Of it, he said it marked a career shift from Cage's "entertainingly eccentric phase" into his "genuinely befuddling and perhaps sad phase", and noted his "peculiar (of course)", "near-British accent"; he also criticized Hayden Christensen's performance as "lifeless". Jeanette Catsoulis of The New York Times called the movie a "loony", "wannabe epic rattling with swords and clichés". She chiefly criticized the "barnacle-encrusted plot" as being "dumbed down to the studs", along with the performance of Christensen, while praising photography and "surprisingly classy" battle scenes. Gary Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times had kinder words to say, calling the movie "visually arresting, smartly paced, well-edited", but otherwise "unremarkable". He said the film may best be remembered for Cage's "warrior coif", saying it was "perhaps his most unflattering movie hairdo yet — and that's saying a lot" and that Cage could "pinch-hit for Gene Simmons at a Kiss concert". And Sebastian Zavala, writing for ScreenAnarchy.com, said that the movie "could certainly have been a better vehicle for an unleashed, energetic Cage", but that "what we end up with is a lifeless, slightly-entertaining-yet-ultimately-disappointing action “epic”."
