Wednesday, 14 December 2011

Outland

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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Year:1981
Country of origin:UK
Director:Peter Hyams
Genre:Classy sci-fi
Starring:Sean Connery, Peter Boyle, Frances Sternhagen, Clarke Peters
Rating:3/5
IMDB link:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082869/
Tagline:On Jupiter's moon something deadly is happening
Favourite line:"You know, you haven't your medical all-star here. Company doctors are like ship's doctors. Most are just one shuttle flight ahead of a malpractice suit."

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.

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