ederal District Marshall W. T. "Bill" O'Neil's (Connery) unbending adherence to doing what's right has placed him at odds with his superiors. As a result, he has pulled a series of unenviable assignments, the latest being a one-year stint overseeing law enforcement on Con-Am 27, a titanium mining operation on the remote Jovian moon of Io.
Adding injury to exile, his wife has decided to leave him and return with their young son to Earth. But O'Neil will be going home soon enough, as long as he doesn't make waves for the hundreds of local miners, or get in the way of General Manager Sheppard (Boyle), whose main interest is maintaining the mine's high output.
Then reports start coming in about workers behaving crazily, with lethal effect. They attack prostitutes, or go into the vacuum of space without environment suits, where they explode messily.
With the at-first reluctant help of Dr. Lazarus (Sternhagen), O'Neil discovers a pattern to the erratic behavior. Twenty-eight workers have gone crazy in the last six months--up from two in the period just before.
He and Lazarus uncover the presence of a drug intended to boost workers' productivity at the expense of their sanity, and O'Neil finds himself at odds with Sheppard and the powerful forces behind him.
Sheppard first appeals to O'Neil to drop the matter. But when O'Neil refuses--apprehending two drug dealers in Sheppard's employ--he becomes an outcast in the mining colony. Sheppard decides the only way to deal with O'Neil is to bring in hired guns from out of town. Now on his own, O'Neil must figure out how to save himself as the gunmen close in for a final showdown.
"This is no place for heroes."
Outland may not be the first movie to adapt the conventions of the Western to SF, but it's one of the best. Film buffs will recognize the basic outlines of the plot from the Gary Cooper-Grace Kelly classic High Noon.
But Outland, created by Peter Hyams (2010, Timecop), also took SF films into a new direction in the period just after the success of Star Wars and Alien.
Outland expanded Alien's concept of outer space as an industrial workplace into a fully realized vision. Con-Am 27 is a self-contained production complex in outer space, complete with habitats, mines and strip bars; with complicated social structures; with corrupt lawmen and a criminal underground. Viewers can practically smell the sweat and feel the grit.
But Outland is also a recognizable place, peopled with humans who are motivated by familiar needs: the taciturn lawman who wants to prove he's not just a screw-up, the cynical doctor who wants to regain her self-respect, the oleaginous company executive who just wants to get rich.
And much attention has been paid to dialog and character moments: O'Neil's acerbic encounters with Dr. Lazarus; the heart-to-heart talk between O'Neil and his chief deputy Montone, played with folksy charm by James B. Sikking; O'Neil's confrontation with Sheppard as he drives golfballs onto a virtual fairway. Which is not to diminish the story's action: There's a terrific chase through the habitat's high-tech corridors, narrow escapes in the vacuum of space, and a final shootout as suspenseful as any in SF.
Connery, as always, commands the screen whenever he's on. But the supporting players are equally compelling, especially Sternhagen, who brings humor and vinegar to her burnout doctor, who's not so bad after all.
