Io foreground, Jupiter background
Image Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA
Outland (1981), starring Sean Connery and Peter Boyle, is a movie with flubbed potential. Connery is the Federal Marshall William T. O’Niel, newly assigned to the corporate mining camp on the Jovian moon Io. He’s the commander of the law & order detachment, and immediately, the corporate senior manager, Sheppard (Boyle), intimates that his workers work hard and play hard – and so should be given some latitude as this is the most productive mine in the company.
But O’Niel discovers that suicides and violence have skyrocketed since Sheppard took over operations. What could be causing this? Corpses are disposed of nearly immediately, since explosive decompression is messy, and autopsies virtually unheard of. O’Niel manages to get some blood from the latest violent person and brings it to the mining camp doctor, who discovers the blood contains a synthetic drug that destroys the brains of the addicts over time.
The movie plays out with finding who is smuggling them in, and ends in a violent attack by imported assassins on O’Neil.
By which time you’re just glad the movie is over. The primary problem with this movie is the characters – while there is potential, the characters are mostly constructed of low-grade cardboard. The two exceptions are the doctor, who displays an awareness of her shortcomings and handles them with some comic utterances, and the primary addict, who although on screen for mere seconds, brings a frenetic, terror-filled humanity to his realization that the prostitute he’s beaten up just might be dead – and that would be a bad thing for him.
But O’Neil and his family? Predictably dull. Sheppard and the other denizens of the camp? Dull. The assassins? Even worse – inept and so empty of character that we hardly even see their faces.
The filmmakers do play a little with the majesty of nearby Jupiter, but in the very first scene I exclaimed, “It looks like a space movie from the 1950s!” Which isn’t a bad thing – but I was hoping for something more impressive. The science is a mish-mash – the lower gravity (1/6th Earth) is acknowledged but not portrayed, except for the very few outside scenes. The suggestion of hibernation for trips to and from Earth is quite interesting – but what about the radiation to which Io is being subjected? Is this not a concern?
The cinematography is adequate, but low-resolution; the audio is OK. The use of music, despite an apparent popularity at the time, struck both of us as awkward and distracting.
But the real problem is the story. Bad characters, very abrupt segues – this could have been an interesting movie, but instead it was dull.
