Outland (DVD)

... even without every possible extra. The transfer is nice and crisp with no fuzz or any other traditional "film" defects which can make their way onto some disc releases. The audio has good depth and sounds strong though my HiSense 4K television as well as the Edifier Bluetooth headset used to avoid annoying roommates. Performances are quite solid and no more, or less, predictable than same characters present in the classic American westerns upon which the movie draws so much of its foundation. Everyone from bit players to the main cast feels strongly invested and appear to understand their part in the world Peter Hyams is building. Certainly a product of it's time concerning treatment of women & children, etc. but no worse than any of the westerns upon which the movie is patterned. Did I mention that this is the purest presentation of a "Western in Space" that I've ever seen 🤪😂 - it's really well done and certainly worth a spin. As to extras; wakipedia says there's a "making of" documentary as well as a stills gallery on an earlier DVD release but the only bonus on the Blu-ray is a commentary from the director which is very worth a listen. Cheers from Texas, Billy

Good movie. Interesting plot. Video disc is of excellent quality.

Hyams brought us Capricorn One in 1978, a NASA conspiracy thriller about a faked manned mission to Mars gone awry. In 1981, he brought us Outland, a thriller about corporate greed and corruption in an age of deep-space mining on Jupiter's violent moon of Io. Workers have been taking a company-provided narcotic that makes them work like horses, cramming a 14-hour work-day into 6 hours, giving them more time to play. Management is happy because productivity is high. Workers are happy because they have more play-time to eat, drink, indulge in company-provided prostitutes free of Syphillus, and be merry. Only problem is the narcotic causes them to go buggo and do wacky things like pull the plug on their space suits allowing zero-atmosphere pressure in, or taking the elevator down to the vacuum of space without an environment suit, causing their bodies to explode. Sean Connery as Marshall O'Neil has just been appointed the new Head of Security, and, with a little help from company Dr. Lazrus, played by Frances Sternhagen, gets wind of the plot, so investigates, much to the disdain of General Manager Shepherd, played by Peter Boyle. Hijinx ensues. Connery becomes hunted by a group of highly-trained assassins, and, with no help from his men, the lone prey has to become the hunter, with a little help from Dr. Lazarus. What sets this movie apart, aside from wise casting, is the gritty "dirt under the fingernails" production design of the realistic sets (a move inspired by Ridley Scott's "truckers in space" Alien two years prior), sterile, fluorescent-light cinematography and Jerry Goldsmith's "outlandish", score, a bizarre mix of synthesizer and orchestra. With these elements, the film becomes a sensual pleasure. The blu-ray looks very crisp, with superb detail and rich colors, as rich as the sterile fluorescent lighting provides anyway. I can't compare the blu-ray to the according to other reviewers apparently mediocre at best DVD, as I never got around to collecting the DVD, and thus didn't have to endure it. I'm downgrading my review to 4 stars, because the blu-ray has no extras save for a theatrical trailer and very interesting commentary track by director Peter Hyams. Hyams has been called a sci-fi director. He prefers to call himself a science-FEASIBILITY director, because his movies are plausibly real. Considering Outland's modest box office success, one can only expect a bare-bones home entertainment release. Still, Outland is a very good film, spare on dialogue, rich in atmosphere. It's a very realistic look at a bleak future of space mining operations and the dangers of greed. "Even In Space, the Ultimate Enemy is Still Man".

I bought this Blu-ray version because I owned the DVD version which was lousy, lousy, lousy. The Blu-ray is so much better that it looks like the movie was shot in the past 5 years rather than in the early 80's. Colors really pop and the detail is extraordinary. The scale models of the mining structures on Io are fabulous. Director Peter Hyams and his special effects crew had no idea people would be watching these scenes decades later on widescreen LCD's and digital playback equipment. They don't look realistic, but they have the detail and beauty of works of art. Speaking of art, composer Jerry Goldsmith provided one of his typically excellent scores full of rousing excitement and relentless menace. It sounds great--vivid and propulsive with the brass and percussion-heavy orchestral textures coming through clear. And of course, there's at least one great-I mean really great, classic-chase scene. Sean Connery chases a drug pusher through a variety of residential and sleeping quarters which culminates in a fist and knife fight in an employee cafeteria. The sleeping and residential area is an enormous structure composed of individual but interlocked small cages--and it's always crowded with walking, sleeping, and showering mine workers. The camera work is phenomenal following this cat-and-mouse chase with smooth and fluid shots--the editing during this chase scene courtesy of Stuart Baird--contributes to the high energy of this whole scene. Add to that excellent acting from Connery, Frances Sternhagen, and Peter Boyle. The only drawback are the attempts to reinvent High Noon. Shotguns are a bad idea inside of space stations, especially inside of greenhouses. The final fight outside of the station is anticlimactic after the abovementioned foot chase. Overall, though, this movie really kicks it on every possible level. And let me emphasize there's no comparison between this Blu-ray and the previous Warner Brothers DVD.

Outland is one of the better 1980s science fiction movies I've seen. The models are high quality, the acting and writing are exceptional, sets that really establish the mine as stark and functional, and the character of the Marshal comes across as not only noble but believable. Doctor Lazarus is also a keeper as a bitter woman aware of his own limitations, but at heart one of the best and most caring of people. The only part that looks dated is the computers, but I feel that fits with the overall setting, where so much of the mine is strictly utilitarian. The overall themes of the movie work exceptionally well. The first, corporate heads willing to sacrifice their employees' lives for ever greater profit, is all too common in the real world. The second, how people will ignore obvious evils to save their own skins, is also a tragically common. These were issues in the 1980s, still happen today, and will likely be with us for many generations. A great movie like Outland shows how some things never change, no matter how much we need them to.

Many of the other reviews talk about horrible picture quality, and must be universally referring to the DVD. With director Peter Hyam using a lot of shadow and long lense shots I can see where bad copies may be hard to watch, but the bluray on my 50" plasma looked great. Most people think of "Outland" as a western set in outerspace, and listening to the worthwhile director's commentary proves them correct. That may be one reason it holds up so well for a movie from 1981. These are flawed characters who when faced with the harsh realities of frontier life have to find out who they really are. Connery may be the star, but there is a good supporting cast, especially Peter Boyle (Everybody Loves Raymond) as the corrupt head of a moon mining operation. Much of the set is reminiscent of the original "Alien" movie, and while the special effects from then won't wow anyone there are only a couple times when their age is a little distracting. The "space saloon" features some hi-tech laser dancing I could have lived without. The rest of the film, which is ultimately a character driven movie about people, more than makes up for it. Aside from a somewhat cheesy ending at the VERY end (the climax is great, we're only talking literally about the final minute here) this is almost a perfect movie. 4 1/2 stars.

I enjoyed Outland when I first saw it on HBO back in the 80s and still love it today. It is a great example of a western done well in outer space. Re-watching over 40 years later, I still love the set design and feel of the mining outpost on Io. It has that same lived in feel that Alien had. The acting is great and the plot decently simple. I love how they setup that the main character has a family and gets them out of the way immediately. However, they do it in a way that makes sense and helps give a good ending to the film. This is the kind of film that would be good remake material. Update the science and special effects but leave the core plot and that "dirty, lived in" feel the same. Because let's face it, a mining outpost on a moon orbiting Jupiter is probably not going to be your super-clean, white walls space station. It is going to be like an oil drilling platform out in the middle of the ocean. Dirty, cramped, and everyone living much closer together than most people are comfortable with.

Update!! Obviously Warner screwed the pooch on this and the movie has not been remastered at all. Meaning this is the same crappy transfer they used in the early years of DVD's nearly 10 years ago. How could this happen? Apparently in Europe they received a much better transfer of this movie which has none of the problems the US version does. I'll be finding a copy of it there. Way to go Warner!! AVOID THE US VERSIONS AT ALL COST!!! Let me start out by saying first that for me Outland will always hold a special place in my heart. Growing up I was a bit of a black and white snob, stemming from the fact that I grew up with color television. So due to this fact I was not exposed to the source material for this film until later in life. For those not aware, Outland is a Sci-Fi retelling of the classic movie "High Noon". So this was my first exposure to the classic story of a lone law man against the odds where the "towns" people around him refuse to help. While it may not be the best movie ever made it's a well done and well acted movie starring Sean Connery in one of his few true Sci-Fi roles. Here he plays Federal Marshall William T. O'Neil who we see arriving with his family at a Mining facility located on Io, one of Jupiter's moons. The basic plot sees Connery through tracking down an illegal drug that is causing some of the inhabitants of the facility to become violent and even graphically (if not realistically) suicidal. The Marshal runs into a few stereotypical characters along the way. We have the cranky doctor, played wonderfully by Frances Sternhagen. Then we have the bad guy of the movie played with a bit of unusual casting, by Peter Boyle, most well known as the creature from "Mel Brooks, Young Frankenstein" and the dad on "Everybody Loves Raymond". Boyle's character is the one true week point of this film, but in a unique way. His character is the Administrator of the mining facility and his job is to ensure that everything runs smoothly, including the distribution of recreational drugs to his hard working miners. He is not scary as much as he is simply doing his job which makes his actions even more despicable. When the Marshall finally captures the dealer of the drug operation who fingers Boyle's character the Marshall confronts him. This sets in motion the final and best part of this movie which is basically the same as the climax of "High Noon". Hired guns are flown in and are gunning for the Marshall, he has to avoid and outsmart them in order to survive and it's here that this movie really pays off. Using the environment and Sci-Fi setting to maximum effect, Director Peter Hyams creates a great cat and mouse sequence with some really fun results. The movie is soon to be re-released on DVD and hopefully this time they will repair the truly horrible transfer that this movie has had up until now. This was surprising given that it was one of the first movies ever to be released on the format but shows the relative poor performance that a lot of studios had back in the early days of transferring movies to digital formats. If you're looking for a fun movie you can do far worse than Outland. A classic it may not be, but it's far better than most of the Sci-Fi channel movies of the week and hopefully this new release set for November 27th 2007 will finally do the movie justice on DVD.