Starring: Sean Connery, Peter Boyle, Frances Sternhagen     Written and Directed By:  Peter Hyams

The Story:

You know when I was a kid I really wanted to be an astronaut. I thought that traveling to other planets was as easy as the weekly Saturday morning exploits of the Far Out Space Nuts. Of course as I got older I realized that there was a more to space travel than just pushing a button....and that I personally lacked the brains to pilot a spaceship. You know how your parents always tell you that you can do anything you put your mind too when you're a child? That's bull crap, folks. I think my grandfather knew by the time I was eight that I wasn't going to be walking on Mars in this lifetime.

Outland doesn't take place on Mars, though, it takes place in the Con Am Mine 27 , located on Jupiter's Moon, Io. (I like the way they put a blurb on the screen telling us its pronounced "Eye-Oh"....Geez, I said I lacked the brains to pilot a spaceship, not that I couldn't read, arrogant movie!) The mine is a dark, gritty place, crowded with miners, administrative and support staff and of course, law enforcement personnel. That's where we find Marshal William T. O' Neil. (Connery) Marshal O' Neil is new to the place and his wife Carol and son Paulie (Odious Child Actor) ain't to keen on living there. I can see why....the interior is cold and metallic, and we find out through dialogue that young Paul has never ever set foot on Earth. (Paul looks to be around 9 or 10 years old) I try not to wrap my head around that too much since there's no real background given on the events of Paul's birth. I mean, if he's never been to Earth, where was he born? On a spaceship or space station? Where did O'Neil meet Carol in the first place, then? It couldn't have been Earth, could it....would they let a pregnant woman on a spaceship? I guess so, since O' Neil has spent his career being transferred from "one toilet to the next", because, as the General Manager of Con-Am 27, Mark Sheppard, (Boyle) puts it, he has a "Big Mouth".

Honestly, O' Neil seems rather quiet to me, but his "big mouth" has gotten him into some trouble again. Almost as soon as he assumes his duties there are two incidents involving miners exposing themselves to the vacuum of space. Carol can't bear to raise Paul in this place and decides to vamoose with the boy. O' Neil and the mine's grouchy chief medical officer, Dr. Lazarus, find out that the men dying have been using a synthetic drug....indeed, most of the miners have been using it. this Drug makes the miners work harder and feel great, but after continued use it makes you go nuts and do something stupid, like walk out of airlock without a spacesuit on. Its pretty obvious that Sheppard has been providing this stuff to the workers and O'Neil refuses to look the other way. When the "big mouthed" marshal confronts Sheppard and lets him know that he's destroyed the last shipment of drugs, Sheppard calls his shady connections and puts a hit out on him. Much too O'Neil's dismay, his deputy, Montone, is on the take and none of his men have the courage to fight. He's on his own, except for the scant aid of the elderly Dr. Lazarus.

I've heard this movie is like "High Noon" set in the future. Well, I've never seen High Noon so I really can't say. What I can say is the hit men Sheppard gets are said to be the best.....and that sounded ominous until they arrived on the screen. I swear to Jabootu, I thought the one with the baseball cap on was R. Lee Ermey for a second. The other dude looked like the cat that works in the deli in Lakewood. But looks don't count here, its skill....and these hit men seem to have very little. When they get O' Neil in their crosshairs they fail to do more than wing him, and you'd think they'd at least be wary of traps....like the one O'Neil set for them. Or at least they'd realize that firing a projectile weapon in a big glass room is a bad idea....especially if the glass is all that separates you from the cold hard vacuum of outer space.

Outland isn't a bad movie....at least its not bad in an unwatchable way. But once you apply even the smallest bit of logic to it, plot holes arise that you could drive a Mack truck through. For instance, why doesn't O' Neil tell someone in authority about the drugs? He's gotta work for someone! Sheppard can get thugs from the nearby space station but a federal marshal can't get any help? and just how long has he been on the job? dialogue tells us that Paulie has never been on earth! The kid is at least freaking ten! You mean to tell me that O'Neil has been traveling around the toilet bowl bases of the solar system that long? Geez, how much does he get paid? I won't even go into the fact that people don't actually explode like balloons when in the vacuum of space.

Honestly, only Sean Connery's presence and Frances Sternhagen's cranky Dr. Lazarus make this movie not stink badly. Peter Boyle really doesn't have much to do with Sheppard's dialogue. As a matter of fact  I think he was drunk or something during some of his lines. He delivers them with so little passion it could be measured in negative numbers. I guess the best way to think of outland is this....Sean Connery can at least make a silly script watchable....(League of extraordinary gentlemen, anyone?)

Best Lines:  “I'd like a report on these incidents from the last six months....and I'd like it really soon, or I might just kick your nasty ass all across this room. That's a marshal joke.” -O' Neil makes his point to the bitchy Dr. Lazarus.

 Are you kidding me?

1.) I don't understand something about the way space travel is portrayed in this movie. When the movie is opened words on the screen tell us how far Io is from earth, how far it is from Jupiter, etc. But then we're informed that the distance to "The space station" from the mine on Io is three days. I guess this is so the movie can sidestep the entire "how fast can spaceships travel" thing. But we also learn that it takes more than a year to get to earth from Io, but a supply ship comes in weekly from the space station. Even if the space station is really close to Io, it must get supplies from Earth. Either the space station has a serious [unwrite]load of supplies aboard, or there are about a hundred shuttles in a line through space bringing in supplies.

2.) Movies set in the future always have this one thing going against them...the pace of technology. The computer monitors in this movie aren't even in color. I'm sure that back in 1981 when this movie was made they probably looked futuristic, but right now in 2004 they seem laughable. Seriously....you could get a better picture hooking up an internet cam to your computer.

3.) I'm impressed with the technology shown in this movie....no, not the archaic computer monitors, but the life support system this mine must use. Montone smokes a cigar in his morning briefing. Without counting I'm sure there are a few other scenes where we see characters smoking. They must have one freakin' great oxygen recycling and fire control system!

4.) Sheppard is surely no criminal mastermind. We can assume that killing a marshal is a big no no in this movie. Sheppard's shady underworld connection tells him that if he screws up assassinating O' Neil the next bunch of hit men will be coming for Sheppard. So, uh, why use hit men? Sheppard already has at least one, probably more, of the law enforcement staff on his team. And he knows O'Neil's wife has left him and the man is probably heartbroken. Wouldn't it be easier to just set up an accident and make it look like a suicide? I'm not a criminal mastermind but that's what I would have done. Considering how dangerous the mine is, and how no one on Earth seems to care about the unexplained deaths, it looks like a pretty obvious solution to me!

5.) Incidentally, wouldn't Sheppard have to have Dr. Lazarus eliminated also? Or did he think that O' Neil just managed to analyze his synthetic drug all by himself?

Nudity and Sex: A brief glimpse of a space hooker.

Huh?:

O'Neil fools the second hit man in the Greenhouse so that he fires his rifle into the windows, exposing him to space. but wouldn't the glass in that greenhouse have to be pretty strong? At least bulletproof-strong? A small pebble sized meteor would shatter if it wasn't.

whether or not O'Neil is a "bad apple" is open for debate. He says he's been transferred from one toilet to another because his superiors feel he belongs there, but there's no visible clue to that assertion in the movie. O'Neil seems like an okay guy. but Dr. Lazarus....frack, my Droogies, they must have some killer malpractice insurance in the future! Lazarus eventually discovers the drugs that are making the miners go nutso, but only because O'Neil provided a blood sample. she said earlier that she couldn't do an autopsy on any of the dead guys because there wasn't much left of the bodies and the company had the bodies shipped away and jettisoned into space with haste. Yeah, but there was always some blood left. Why didn't she at least run a test on some of the blood to rule out the possibility of drugs in the first place. Crap, I ain't even a doctor but that would have occurred to my friggin' cat!

O Neil is right when he says "My men are [unwrite]!" There are only 2 hit men and he has at least 6 to 8 deputies. these pussies are too afraid to fight? Jeez....How the freakin' hell does Sheppard keep his drug dealing undercover. Everyone seems to know about the hit men coming for O'Neil, so its no big leap to reason that they know that there's some underworld dealings going on in the first place. Even if Sheppard succeeded in killing O'Neil does he really think that no one in the hundreds of people on Io would rat about it when they left? (This is one of the reasons I said earlier that Sheppard should have tried to make O'Neil's death look like a suicide.)

The Final Judgment: If you don't pay attention to the teeny details of it, this movie can be entertaining. Its kinda aged a bit....but still, its a decent flick if you're just looking for some old 80's science fiction.Its a decent rental if you're in the mood for that kinda thing or you're just a big Connery fan.