i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

Absolutely Fantastic

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Sean Connery is not a very convincing actor; he has made a career of playing Sean Connery and done it very well over a long period, but in this film he didn't even bother to try acting less wooden than normal. Stomping around scowling at everything and everyone, sounding extremely bored when talking with both his wife and child when he should be trying to convince both that he loves them (and what were they thinking - Connery has an accent, a distinctly Scottish accent, yet it must be assumed that his son didn't hang around with him much for it to have rubbed off because his accent is very much your all American kid's, like everyone else. I know America makes the movies but that doesn't mean that every person in space in the future will have an American accent!), and his speaking is both forced and telegraphed: you know what he was going to say before he says it. In fact the entire plot was forced and telegraphed, stolen from High Noon and with the mystery solved fairly quickly so that all that is left is to see how the hero wins the day - and he will, because he is Sean Connery and you know he will not be killed by a bunch of unknowns. The only, ONLY bright spot in the entire film was Frances Sternhagen as Dr Lazarus, the bad tempered and reluctant, motor-mouthed sidekick who is the only person on the colony to help Connery when he needs it; her name was obviously somebody's poor attempt at humour. Peter Boyle was unconvincing as the bad guy, instead appearing as though he had an earpiece hidden away and telling him what to say and how to react to Connery's stilted dialogue - he could have stayed home and phoned it in. Every other person in the film could have been a cardboard cutout for all the effect they made.Just how bad was knowledge about the rules of physics in 1981? Exploding bodies? Variations in gravity depending on which side of a bulkhead you are? And the shuttle arriving early - nice idea if you know nothing about getting from a to b (airliners on Earth fly great circles since you cannot fly in a straight line for thousands of mile, but they have headwinds to contend with). And heat - there appeared to be a thin wall between the pressurised interior and the great outdoors, certainly in those walkways, yet there was no mention of the potential of frostbite or getting frozen to the walls. This film just depressed me.

Outland - a dystopian sci-fi flick which combines the trades of Western and crime movies with a sci-fi scenario. A perfect mix, with really good acting even in all the minor roles - and on top you get Sean Connery himself as an Space Marshall waiting for his "High Noon" like Gary Cooper did in Zinnemann's immortal classic!Innovative mix for its time and like Zardoz (also with Sean Connery) one of the sci-fi classics of 2nd line.

Apparently in the future all boardroom extras have taken up smoking and they are too cheap to turn the lights on. Oh and that we are going to mine titanium ore from one of Jupiter's moons, Io. They are crap at painting too. In the end this film was just like Alien (1979) but without the alien in it. The sci-fi had parallels with earth that did not test the mind. Pretty straight-forward and watchable space action-adventure.

With the late 70's giving us Star Wars and Alien, these films inspired a barrage of filmmakers to have a more realistic edge with sci-fi. Outland is no exception and while the film is heavily flawed, it's a decent sci-fi movie with lots of twists and turns to keep you engaged. The miniatures and models look fantastic and still hold up today in my opinion. It inhabits that Alien mining operation look throughout and Peter Hyams did a great job on an aesthetic point of view. It's not as detailed as Alien, but what is? The story is also pretty well written and many have labelled it as High Noon in space. It definitely has that western feeling especially with the showdown climax and your typical western pistols have been replaced with shotguns. Sean Connery delivers a great performance and I would say this is one of his best post Bond films along with The Name of the Rose. Despite these positives there are quite a few negatives. The explosive decompression scenes are quite dated and are unintentionally hilarious with peoples heads inflating like balloons. The child actor who plays Marshall O Neill's son is quite possibly the worst child actor ever! It takes you out of the movie for a while but thankfully it's only a brief scene.If you haven't seen this I would recommend Outland, especially if you're a fan of Alien or any other industrial sci-fi movie from that era. It's quite overlooked so definitely give it a look.