Julianne Nicholson and Scarlett Blum in “The Outsider” Bob Mahoney/HBO What could have led the police to make such a scene out of his arrest? Well, there are fingerprints at the crime scene, multiple eye witnesses, and video evidence connecting Terry to the murder. Their beloved, benevolent coach just got shoved into a police cruiser and hauled off to jail.
Ralph is so convinced Terry is the killer that he cuffs him in the middle of a game, as his wife Glory (Julianne Nicholson), their kids, and lots of townsfolk packed in the bleachers gape in horror. When “The Outsider” begins, Ralph is on his way to arrest Terry Maitland (Jason Bateman), a local Little League coach and father of two girls. The good news? He knows who’s to blame for this latest death, and he’s going to make him pay for it. Granted, Ralph’s only child wasn’t killed or violated in the woods, but the still-recovering cop isn’t exactly over the injustice of losing his boy. Here’s the bad: The Georgia-based detective caught a particularly ugly case involving a brutally murdered child, not long after he lost his own teenage son. Meet Ralph Anderson (Mendelsohn), a cop stuck in a job-mandated good news/bad news scenario. Patricia Arquette’s Kooky Dark Comedy ‘High Desert’ Is a Chaotic Charmer With the help of a great cast (led by Ben Mendelsohn) and eerie, stark direction from Emmy-winner Jason Bateman, “The Outsider” isn’t on the level of Price’s past work - but it’s far better than this story has any right to be.
Adapted by Richard Price, who’s known for writing realistic police dramas like “The Night Of,” “The Wire,” and “The Deuce,” HBO’s 10-episode series is still hampered by a few of the original story’s trappings, but its author knows better than to take his audience’s trust for granted. HBO’s “The Outsider” offers a better balance, if not a perfect one. Perhaps the Master of Horror has been writing about ghosts and demons for so long that he no longer feels the need to convince anyone that believing in the boogeyman is a reasonable, rational choice, but the book tries to combine two, diametrically opposed genres - speculative fiction and true crime - without respecting the foundation of both. King asks the same from his readers, to believe in the unbelievable, except the novel falls spectacularly short is in justifying its own request. Stephen King’s 2018 novel focuses on a small town detective whose job requires him to find concrete answers to real-world mysteries, and then hands him an impossible case he can’t explain - not without considering supernatural possibilities. At its core, “ The Outsider” is a story about belief.
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