The new 17-minute short film Outlaws may be for the British brand Belstaff, but it’s more a homage to iconic circus films than anything else. In the short, David Beckham plays an outlaw biker who comes across a circus and falls for a lonely trapeze artist, thereby being thrown into the show by the unstable performance director (Harvey Keitel). The brand’s James Dean-like leather jacket may adorn Beckham, but cinephiles will be more interested in the striking imagery and inspiration borrowed directly from films like Wings of Desire, La Strada, The Elephant Man, Freaks and Big Fish, to name a few. According to Belstaff, “the circus acts as a storytelling device and a place of magic, as it does in Outlaws. In fact, Outlaws takes a little piece from each strand of circus-film history, blending them into something that is at once seductive, fantastical, compelling and a little bit dangerous.” Choosing to sample historic films was clearly a good move on Belstaff’s part, since even though Outlaws lacks a unique storyline or any true dialogue, it certainly looks good.
