Diractors is an ongoing series in which Hassle writer Jack Draper examines films, new and old, whose directors are better known for their work in front of the camera.
While not great, Outcome exists as rich text that has much in common with Good Fortune from fellow comedy diractor Aziz Ansari. On the surface, both films are about how hollow contemporary Los Angeles feels while trying to be a decent person. Overlap continues when the filmmakers are forced to admit how silly this all is, the construction rules to protect someone’s image. It’s almost like there’s a higher power out there deciding ones fate then to just realize your past regrets dictate the present. This may result in an interesting object with Good Fortune, but these ideas trip over themselves in Outcome, a movie with a decent enough thesis without much substance to be supportive. Jonah Hill’s comedy-drama only has the capability of landing a few of its jokes and weaves in and out of being dramatically interesting. Most of all, and with one last mention of Good Fortune, its deployment of decent guy Keanu Reeves can only go so far.
Paying your penance can only go so far when forgiveness isn’t solely judged by yourself. Actor Reef Hawk (Reeves) has been clean for five years. During a cameo from Van Jones, he is casually placed within the likes of Denzel Washington or Tom Cruise as an all time great. His life is completely upended, though, when he gets a call from his crisis attorney Ira Slitz (Hill himself, in a deeply misguided performance), who informs him that someone is using a tape with dubious material as blackmail. In order to identify the blackmailer, Reef then sets out to make up with people he has hurt in the past. Even if these people do not care to make well with him and reject the idea that time heals. His main enablers are childhood friends Kyle (Cameron Diaz, continuing the run of streaming slop in her return to “movies”) and Xander (Matt Bomer) who are there to either there to genuinely care for a friend they know more than anyone else or people who have gotten very good at performative friendship. Never improving that they pretend about Reef’s well being but just seeing how they can quickly lose grasp on being a part of his inner circle that is already feeling a bit dated.
On the flip side of the significance in Reef’s life, his present looks like a small mess compared to the reckoning with his old manager, Howard (Martin Scorsese, in a towering one scene performance). The movie picks itself up from flatlining during their confrontation, which so much pain and sadness when discussing their failures they see in Reef’s life when unpacking how self destructive he becomes. Scorsese’s entire demeanor completely shifts when he is tasked with performing hurt and not spreading the word about Powell and Pressburger like he has for decades. Reef sits there and takes Howard’s read on his life, with a keen understanding of his good guy persona that’s highly manufactured with someone like Howard seeing how it’s made.
Over its brief runtime. Outcome leaps to something undeserved and less regarding which hits as hard as a post on r/Fauxmoi. Other bitter characters from Reef’s life, like his mom (Susan Lucci) or ex girlfriend (Welker White), make appearances to hear him out while explaining in great detail how he hurt them all white protecting an image. It’s unclear how Hill wants to extend and retract his grace to these people, since Reef is a product of the Hollywood disease. Even Hill himself, as Ira, lets Reef off with a pat on the back, just when the move reveals what’s on the incriminating evidence that is tame in Hill’s eyes yet still damning to the audience.
Outcome is most certainly impossible to regard without the Jonah Hill social mishaps in recent years. Being 13 when The Wolf of Wall Street came out and Superbad remained very popular, my friends and I were eager to defy our parents’ expectations and eager to be entertained by Jonah Hill’s presence. He was always identifiable as that one friend who is pretty dumb but still kept around because, hey, that’s just who he is. After the Jump Street duology, he received two (great) Oscar nominations, voiced a handful of animated movies, remained dependable in the Apatow troupe, and worked in a couple of auteurs’ late period work like Harmony Korine or Gus Van Sant.
But like my buddy Clay Williams mentioned on the Jump Street duology episode of Exiting Through the 2010s, “He just seems finished,” which is an accurate read on himself on his public life and career as a movie star. Both are exhausting. He is of the crop of millennial actors, entering their 40s and thus gaining the privilege to be more selective, but he has yet to gain a new sensibility or perspective. He made an attempt to rehabilitate his image through a notable weight loss and refining his teen-boy sense of humor, but neither resulted in a consistent run of interesting roles to show he can appeal to people again. He found an inability to find sizable audiences for Netflix films like Stutz, You People and Don’t Look Up in the 2020s, where he could’ve carried on some credibility in the 2010s. Outcome fails to match its satire or insight in line with films like Funny People or Jay Kelly since there’s no separate party for Hill to hand himself over to thus the result imitates a plea for acceptance even though stories of sexual misconduct are a stain he finds absurd. Much like Aziz Ansari (whose movie looks better in this odd double feature), audiences are smarter now and will not respect you after the mistreatment of women is uncovered, no matter the grey areas or detailed apology.
Outcome
2026
dir. Jonah Hill
84 min.
Now streaming on AppleTV+
