On the moon of Io, workers are dying under mysterious circumstances.
Recently appointed Marshall William T. O’Neil (Sean Connery) begins investigating the deaths.
When the trail leads to the top brass, O’Neil finds his investigation compromised by obstacles and intimidation.
When the lawman refuses to look the other way, other plans are made.
A hit squad are on the next transport to the station, with orders to kill him.
Isolated from the station crew, O’Neil has to face these killers alone…
Peter Hyams, I cannot quit you.
A sci-fi riff on High Noon, Outland takes the 'used future' of seventies sci fi pics like Star Wars and Alien, and strips it down to a scrappy thriller about one individual making a last stand against other people who have greater numbers and bigger guns.
What is so intriguing about the movie is that while it is set in the future on a distant moon, it does not go the extra step of adding aliens or other familiar elements. Instead this is a movie about corporate greed and exploitation of labour. To push this home, one of the film's tag-lines riffs on Alien’s: 'Even in space, the ultimate evil is man'.
Everything wrong in this movie is not the product of extraterrestrials, but old-fashioned humans.
This is not the set up for arguing that Outland is a masterpiece. BUT it is easily the best Peter Hyams movie I have seen.
Part of it is that Hyams works with good collaborators. Instead of Hyams himself, you have Stephen Goldblatt as DOP; as editor, you have Stuart Baird, Hollywood’s Mister Fix-It.
There are some great visuals - I particularly liked the steadicam used during the foot chase through the station; and the use of backlight as the figures arrive on the station.
If you are a fan of the used aesthetic of seventies and eighties sci-fi, Outland is a great addition. There is nothing particularly original about the picture, but this grunt-level look at the future stands on its own.
The homage to High Noon also helps Hyams dramatically - his other films suffer from a lack of real stakes, but there is a solid-ness to the High Noon scenario that gives the movie an in-built sense of escalation. The movie gets a lot of mileage from the countdown to the next ship’s arrival.
There is also something more filled out about the world - Hyams’ other work never feels fully realised or lived in. Characters also have believable relationships that grow - I liked the uneasy friendship between Connery and the station medic, Dr. Lazarus (Frances Sternhagen). Nothing in the movie is that original, but it works.
As the protagonist, Connery is good, but there is a metatextual layer to his performance that kept me at a distance. As with Running Scared, Hyams (who wrote the film) is not good at humour - Connery has a couple of casual domestic violence ‘jokes’ which come early and completely coloured his performance. The character has been abandoned by his family, and those jokes made it hard not to read into their motivations for leaving. Connery’s minimalist performance makes it too easy to overlay his offscreen history into the text.
If that puts you off, that is understandable. These lines come early, but they do not pervade the picture. Once the villains come into view, and O'Niel finds himself under siege, the movie is on a surer footing with regards to connecting with the protagonist.
The action is pretty sparse, but effective. The foot chase I already mentioned is good, and the third act involves O’Neil struggling to fend off his killers outside the station. The killers themselves are not that interesting, but the film makes up for it in terms of the set pieces.
Technically, the biggest problem I had with the movie were the visual effects: Most of the exterior model shots look like models - they suffer from a static camera and overlighting. They look like composites that have not been completely integrated. The movie was one of the first to use the Introvision process which means you can view a finished composite of live action actors against film of models or matte paintings through the camera while shooting, rather than having to wait for post-production.
The composites here look a bit sloppy - you can see the light around the actors, and the lighting of the models never quite blends together. It is not terrible, but it takes time to get used to.
Overall, Outland is a solid thriller and a strong effort from Peter Hyams.
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