Outland - Planet der Verdammten

Let me say up front that any film with exploding people advances to the head of the class. "Scanners" ...awesome. "Robocop" ...grossalicious. "Spinal Tap" ...ahh, a moment of silence for Mick Shrimpton.

"Outland" shines (or should I say 'pops') with the best of them. And it's a great film to boot. More of a western than a scifi--its story has been compared to "High Noon"--it might be light on spaceships and laser battles, but it's definitely heavy on mood and atmosphere. If you like tense, dark, claustrophobic mood films like "Alien", "Das Boot" or even the recent "Pandorum", this is worth checking out.

Sean Connery plays a great character, not quite the perfect hero as James Bond whom he had played a few years prior, but instead he plays a very human, fallible and slightly vulnerable (if not scared) character reminiscent of the great Jimmy Stewart or Gregory Peck in their roles as reluctant heroes. So don't expect Sean to clean house the way Schwarzenegger might. Here he's clearly outnumbered and outgunned which adds to the chills of this suspenseful story.

Director Peter Hyams was at the peak of his game. Films like this, "Capricorn One" and "2010", all filmed within a 7-year stretch, exhibit the same dark, heavy vibe perfect for science fiction. Again let me repeat, you won't get a ton of flashy action scenes, but what you will get is a thick, suspenseful mood.

If you like old school scifi like the films I've mentioned, or if you like westerns, or if you like moody thrillers, I think you'll like this. You might like it so much your head will explode. And then you too will be awesome.

Sean Connery. A man's man, a woman's sex symbol. Good start! Now let's put him on a remote moon of Jupiter. So how many other films have Io as their center of action? Absolutely excellent in combining the effects that were available at the time with a darn good plot. Well overshadowed by the likes of Alien, this is late 70's/ early 80's sci-fi at it's best. No more is the future in space a Utopia, it is a grimy, nasty everyday world where people carry on their sordid business as they ever did. Except there is always a hero; a flawed hero, as is Connery. A personal crusade, a battle almost against the odds (but not unbelievably so, at all) and the true hallmark of a good sci-fi story: That is, the story would work just as well anywhere, any place, any time, as it does in space in the future. What more do you want (Just check out the shuttle landing)? Essential viewing!

One of the best, if not the only, space opera thriller ever, directed by a very sci-fi oriented film director Peter Hyams, remember him with the terrific CAPRICORNE ONE and the lesser 2010, plus several films made decades later: STAY TUNED, END OF DAYS, A SOUND OF THUNDER.... Plus many films with nothing to do with science fiction, thrillers for most of them. So here, Sean Connery is excellent in the marshall role for this HIGH NOON in outer space. Very well done, very exciting. That's one of the best of the director, besides CAPRICORNE ONE, before he loses most of his ambition with the likes of JCVD for instance.

In the near-future, in a space mine set on the Jupiter satellite Io, the new Marshall O'Niel (Sean Connery) discovered a mortal drug trafic. This amphetamine-like drug drives the addicted miners mad and makes them committed suicide. O'Niel encovers the conspiracy, involving the director of the mine, but becomes the target of hitmen, with almost no body helping him. The film is a Science Fiction remake of "High Noon"("le train sifflera trois fois" in French). The train is here replaced by a shuttle from a space station and the Far West by the set on a deep space mining outpost (Not Deep Space Nine).

This a well paced film with a solid acting from Sean Connery. The pursuits, especialy the first in the corridors of the space habitat, are gripping. The film was made in 1981, when the CGI effects were not as prevalent as today. For exemple scenes where humans are dwarfed by huge metalic structures, were executed thanks to a then traditional play of mirrors. I have seen this film at the cinema when it played for the first time in 1981. I have recently watched it again on cable TV and I think it has not aged much. Because it is set on a makeshift sleazy outpost and not a shiny white place as too often in science fiction film, it remains realistic enough, twenty two years later. The themes,a bit overlooked, dangerous mind drugs, greedy multinational (or multi-planet, here) companies, the will and courage of one man against the cowardice of all the others, resonate still in our mind, nowadays. But make no mistake, it not a heavy political film but a good suspense and action film with a science fiction flavour.

Despite some scientific oddities like heads exploding and weightlessness in a zero pressure atmosphere, where as inside the habitat the gravity is normal (by Earth standards), the script remains coherent enough. The strong performance of Sean Connery is helped by those of a serious Peter Boyle and a pre-ER Frances Sternhagen. Rent this film on your local video store or watch it on TV, it is worth seeing it.

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.