Wednesday 16 March 2011

Outland (1981) Dir: Peter Hyams

Sean Connery is a space faring Police Marshall.
Course he is.
It's the far future, and our Mr. Connery is stationed on a colony on IO, Jupiter's second largest moon. Newly arrived, Connery's Marshal O'Neill is warned that the population likes things run just the way they always have been, and they won't be happy if The Law come snooping. Being a law abiding sort, O'Neill ignores the warning and starts poking around, and soon uncovers a drug smuggling racket that will endanger his very life.
And a strange beast it is, too.
Visually, this is pretty imaginative, a nice mix of the super clean interiors of, say, Star Wars and the more grimy, industrial vision of the future we see in Blake's 7. The science fiction backdrop is a touch puzzling as, truthfully, this story could have been told at any point in time but then, would it have looked quite so lush. The effects, whilst massively dated, are sumptuous and ambitious, especially the external shots of the space station towards the end.
No stranger to science fiction (Timecop, 2010), director Hyams handles the setting well and delivers a low key, though reasonably effective sci-fi thriller.

3 out of 5

No comments:

Post a Comment