Outland (film): Difference between revisions

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The film's hero, Federal Marshal W.T. O'Niel (Connery), is assigned to a one-year tour of duty in Con Am 27, a titanium ore mining outpost on Io. O'Niel investigates a series of violent deaths among the miners, which have been dismissed as accidents or suicides by corrupt mine management, cynical police and indifferent medical staff. He discovers that the dead miners have been using an amphetamine called Polydichloric Euthimal which enormously increases their work output, but eventually causes psychotic behaviour that leads to their deaths in the dangerous mining environment.

 

Sheppard puts out the word that the killers are due to arrive on the next shuttle. As the time to landing counts down, O'Niel's corrupt deputies desert him, and his attempts to recruit help from the mining station staff are met with contemptuous rejection. In the end, only the outpost's medical officer Dr. Lazarus (Sternhagen) helps him in a desperate kill-or-be-killed hunt through the colony.

 

* [[The Alcatraz]]: O'Niel keeps his prisoners suspended in a spacesuit in airless [[Artificial Gravity|zero-gravity cells]]. {{spoiler|Unfortunately the prisoner's helplessness makes it all too easy for someone to kill him by cutting his air tether.}}

'''O'Niel''': "My men? My men are shit!" }}

* [[Big Brother Is Employing You]]: O'Niel can listen in on phone conversations and uses CCTV cameras installed inside the colony to track the conspirators. Later those same cameras are used to track O'Niel when he's fighting for his life.

* [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]]: Sheppard.

* [[Determinator]]: Apart from his general stubbornness, O'Niel [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|plunges his bare hand into a pan full of boiling oil]] to retrieve evidence dumped there by a drug smuggler.

* [[Frontier Doctor]]: Dr. Lazarus. "You know, you haven't your medical all-star here. Company doctors are like ship's doctors. Most are one shuttle-flight ahead of a malpractice suit."

* [[Heel Face Turn]]: Dr. Lazarus, Montone.

* [[Mundane Dogmatic]]: ''Outland'' falls at the hard end of [[Mohs Scale of Sci Fi Hardness]]. The hero and the leading lady are middle-aged, unattractive (by movie standards) and cynical. The bad guys are not aliens or galactic emperors, but drug-dealers, corrupt cops and venal businessmen. The weapons are shotguns. It takes a year for spaceships to travel from Earth to Io, with the passengers in cryo-freezing units.

* [[Mind Screw]]: O'Niel to his prisoner, kept in an airless zero-G cell.

* [[Office Golf]]: Sheppard plays an interactive videogame version due to the limited space in his office.

** The golf videogame is pretty awesome though.

* [[Patrick Stewart Speech]]: Subverted. O'Niel looks like he's going to give one of these to Sheppard, {{spoiler|then says "Oh, fuck it!" and just decks the man.}}

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Films of the 1980s]]

[[Category:Hugo Award]]