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

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.

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".

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.

I love this movie, it’s a sci-fi take on High Noon, a loan Marshal takes on the bad guys with no help from the community he protects, sound familiar these days! It’s a must watch movie for me!