Outland

            Outland displays a good thought of what may come in our future. William O’Niel is sent to a mining colony on one of Jupiter’s moons to act as a security guard and an investigator to look into the deaths of certain workers.  When he arrives, he begins to lay down the law, as he is a man of responsibility, however, this gets in the way of the current mining director, Sheppard’s plans.

            He gets caught up with work, and O’Niel’s wife is not having that. So, she decides to leave for Earth, and takes her son with her. They leave a video explaining their actions in their apartment so O’Niel can know where they are and what they are doing. Needless to say, he was upset. I would be irritated if my wife and kid ditched me to go to another planet and left me to be surprised by their absence.

            So, O’Niel befriends this doctor lady, Dr. Lazarus, who I was not too fond of. I think they could have done better with the semi-love interest thing. Her attitude just irritated me, but; she assisted O’Niel a lot on his case. So, there’s that.

            Anyway, he realizes that the cause of the deaths were from a drug that was taken by injection. And, he finds out that Sheppard has been bringing in these drugs to give to the workers. Sheppard discovers that O’Niel is on to him, so he calls in some hitmen to whack O’Niel. Sean Connery faces the mercenaries with help from Dr. Lazarus. They worked the maze of the colony to trap and eliminate the hitmen. Then Ballard, one of the cops working at the colony, reveals himself as an inside man to the operation, as he tries to kill O’Niel. Alas, he fails, in an epic battle on the outside premises of the plant. Sean Connery does his thing by fighting Ballard one on one, eventually ripping out his breathing hose, and dropping him off the side of the building. Crazy.

            After all of this, O’Niel goes to the bar, finds Sheppard, and punches him in the face, knocking him out in front of EVERYBODY. How embarrassing!

            It was interesting to see how life would go in a space colony. It probably isn’t that much different as life on an oilrig. Then again, I could be completely wrong. I’ve never seen/heard anything about what living on an oilrig is like, except for that one movie with Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck and that other lady. Armageddon! That’s it. Funny, they actually went to space in that movie and did a little MINING of their own!

            I think it is safe to say that this is one of my favorite roles that Sean Connery has played. A job well done.