Outland (1981)

Simply Perfect

As Good As It Gets

Absolutely Brilliant!

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

With the late 70's giving us Star Wars and Alien, these films inspired a barrage of filmmakers to have a more realistic edge with sci-fi. Outland is no exception and while the film is heavily flawed, it's a decent sci-fi movie with lots of twists and turns to keep you engaged. The miniatures and models look fantastic and still hold up today in my opinion. It inhabits that Alien mining operation look throughout and Peter Hyams did a great job on an aesthetic point of view. It's not as detailed as Alien, but what is? The story is also pretty well written and many have labelled it as High Noon in space. It definitely has that western feeling especially with the showdown climax and your typical western pistols have been replaced with shotguns. Sean Connery delivers a great performance and I would say this is one of his best post Bond films along with The Name of the Rose. Despite these positives there are quite a few negatives. The explosive decompression scenes are quite dated and are unintentionally hilarious with peoples heads inflating like balloons. The child actor who plays Marshall O Neill's son is quite possibly the worst child actor ever! It takes you out of the movie for a while but thankfully it's only a brief scene.If you haven't seen this I would recommend Outland, especially if you're a fan of Alien or any other industrial sci-fi movie from that era. It's quite overlooked so definitely give it a look.

Outland (1981)Plot In A Paragraph: Marshall O'Neil (Connery) stationed at a remote mining colony on the Jupiter moon of Io uncovers a drug-smuggling conspiracy, and gets no help from the people there, when he finds himself marked for death.I still vividly remember watching this with my dad, the night he rented it on video. It was the first Connery movie I had watched since Diamonds Are Forever. As nothing he made in between that time interested either of my parents for them to rent the video or watch it on TV. Essentially this is High Noon in space. A heavily tanned Connery is the new Marshal who does what a man must do. There are a number of parallels. Killers are on their way to kill the Marshal, who is abandoned abandoned by his deputies, and with none of the residents willing to stand by his side. As the arrival time approaches, Connery enters the cafeteria/saloon and speaks to the townspeople, repeating the classic Cooper line, "I could use a little help," receiving none. He must decide between fleeing and joining his wife and son, or staying and facing almost certain death. Away from the parallels of High Noon, the plot here is an intriguing one, The miners were being given an illegal drug, which increased their output for 11 months and then drove them insane. Connery actually delivers a good performance, that seems to have been forgotten about by the masses, which is a shame as it still holds up today, and Connery does some great acting in a scene where he doesn't utter a line of dialogue, as he watches a video of his wife. Connery was not happy at this movie going over schedule, as he lost a major extended cameo role in Chariots of Fire due to it. All in all, I find Outland to be an enjoyable movie, with good pacing and a good atmosphere, that I usually watch every couple of years. Outland did fair business for a Connery non Bond movie grossing $17 million at the domestic box office. Slightly more than its $16 million budget.

I think, the movie scores by being gritty, tense, slow and almost "awkward". Connery portrays a man on the edge of retirement, lacking confidence, feeling like a loser. His performance is dead-on. All these together give it a feel of realism, by seeming like such a story as we might observe unfolding in our own time and place.There are some logistical gaps in Hyams' screenplay, and a fair amount of the dialogue is leaden, but Connery is both believable and sympathetic here, giving a finely tuned performance that encompasses the marshal's steadfast pursuit of justice as well as empathic scenes involving his wife and son, the former deciding that Io is no place to raise a kid early on. The pacing is set for suspense and the story keeps you interested. But the things that stick and make this worth checking out are the sets and special effects. "Outland" may not be a classic film but it's still entertaining and compelling.Overall rating: 7 out of 10.

In the recognisable future mankind is colonising the Solar System . One of the moons of Jupiter is being mined for titanium . A series of accidental deaths leads law marshal William O'Neill to investigate these deaths . He finds that the deaths were caused by a psychotic reaction to a drug being used by the men , that this drug is being smuggled on to the colony and that the smugglers want him out of the way and no one is going to help him OUTLAND is the film that is forever known as being a HIGH NOON remake set in space which is somewhat disingenuous . It does mirror some of the plot turns of that Western where a man trying to enforce the law finds himself alone . Carl Foreman's Western screenplay has a rather explicit subtext that talks about Hollywood in the 1950s where by people found themselves abandoned by erstwhile friends because they might have had left leaning sympathies and didn't want to be accused by association .It was undoubtedly Hollywood's most shameful period but OUTLAND doesn't feel it's trying to ape that film and if there's a subtext to this film it's that drugs are bad On its own terms there's a lot to admire about OUTLAND . Connery gives one of his better and more commercial performances as tough and noble marshal O'Neill , a tough guy but at heart a family man whose wife and son feel the stress of the job . The film also benefits from some great set design which is both very convincing and functional without appearing too futuristic . You can honestly believe this is a colony on a satellite of Jupiter where titanium ore is being mined What the story differs suffer from slightly is that there are a couple of scenes where O'Neill knows who the bad guy is and the bad guy talks about his plan over video screens . Are we to take it that in this future world video monitors don't have recording facilities ? Likewise tough hit men referred to as " the best in the business " just happen to pull out and assemble guns in front of a video monitor which is very convenient for the plot . One also has to ask don't shuttle passengers get their baggage searched ?Regardless of a few flaws OUTLAND is a gritty and entertaining science fiction space Western that stands on its own hind-legs which unfortunately gets compared to HIGH NOON a little bit too much for its own good