History Film / Outland1981

O'Niel tracks down and arrests one drug dealer, and follows the trail to Mark Sheppard (Boyle), the administrator of the outpost, who is complicit in the drug-dealing. Sheppard has bribed O'Niel's deputy Sgt. Montone to turn a blind eye, and it quickly becomes clear to O'Niel that he cannot rely on any of his fellow officers. Even his wife, frustrated that [[MarriedToTheJob he considers his duty more important than his family]], abandons him, leaving a message pleading with him to return with her to Earth.

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.

O'Niel tracks down and arrests one drug dealer, and follows the trail to Sheppard (Boyle), the administrator of the outpost, who is complicit in the drug-dealing. Sheppard has bribed O'Niel's deputy Montone to turn a blind eye, and it quickly becomes clear to O'Niel that he cannot rely on any of his fellow officers. Even his wife, frustrated that he considers his duty more important than his family, abandons him, leaving a message pleading with him to return with her to Earth.

Undeterred, O'Niel intercepts and destroys a large shipment of drugs. He confronts Sheppard, who asks him why he bothered when nobody else wants the drug shipments stopped, because they make the workers happy, so production is up, so the corporate owners are happy, so Sheppard is happy. O'Niel vows to expose the entire scheme, and Sheppard notifies his contact on the space station who sends two off-world hit-men to murder him.

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.

* MundaneDogmatic: ''Outland'' is a hard science fiction, subject to the ArtisticLicenseSpace exceptions above. 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 with wooden stocks, and the most hi-tech it gets are infrared scopes on said shotguns. It takes a year for spaceships to travel from Earth to Io, with the passengers in cryonic-freezing units.

-->'''O'Niel:''' Because maybe they ''are'' right. They sent me here to this pile of shit because they think I belong here. I want to find out if they're right. There's a whole machine that works because everyone does what they're supposed to. I found out I was supposed to be something I didn't like. That's what's in the program. That's my rotten little part in the rotten machine. I don't like it, so I'm... going to find out if they're right.
-->'''Dr. Lazarus:''' Your wife is one stupid lady. You want to get drunk?

** ExplosiveDecompression: ''Outland'' loves this one! Frequent and messy! It's actually a plot point that because so many victims die of vacuum exposure, there's simply not enough left of them to perform an autopsy on.

* BlackDudeDiesFirst: [[spoiler: Inverted. Clarke Peters' character is the last to die.]]

** Io's surface is a sulphuric LethalLavaLand more akin to [[Film/RevengeOfTheSith Mustafar]] rather than the titanium-rich rocky moon depicted by this film, its atmospheric pressure is also weaker than Earth's, so being exposed to it wouldn't cause people to [[PopGoesTheHuman explode]].

** Io's surface is a sulphuric, volcanic hellscape more akin to [[Film/RevengeOfTheSith Mustafar]] rather than the titanium-rich rocky moon depicted by this film, its atmospheric pressure is also weaker than Earth's, so being exposed to it wouldn't cause people to [[PopGoesTheHuman explode]].

* SpellMyNameWithAnS: Yes, the hero's appears to be the odd spelling ''O'Niel'' rather than the normal O'Neil or O'Neill.

* MegaCorp: Con Am's unseen executives are willing to look the other way as long as mining production is up. However, there are lines that you don't cross with them. As Bellows points out, if they knew what was going on they'd "clamp down like a vise".

* MegaCorp: Con Am's unseen executives are willing to look the other way as long as mining production is up. However, as Bellows points out, there are lines that you don't cross and if they knew what was going on they'd "clamp down like a vise".

* HeKnowsTooMuch: Montone kills the berserk miner Sagan, presumably so he won't say anything about the drugs.

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Sagain, the miner holding the sex worker hostage, shows flashes of this as O'Niel calmly tries to get him back to reality.

* MundaneDogmatic: ''Outland'' is a hard science fiction, subject to the ArtisticLicenseSpace exceptions above. 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 with wooden stocks, and the most hi-tech it gets are infrared scopes on said shotguns. It takes a year for spaceships to travel from Earth to Io, with the passengers in cryonic-freezing units.

** O'Niel is given every chance to cooperate with the CorruptCorporateExecutive, is advised to do so by his own deputy and ridiculed by both his wife and the doctor that his attempt to clean up Con-Am 27 is pointless and futile. He, himself even has doubts about his own moral standings and if he's really a hero type, which he admits out loud to Lazarus when she asks him why he's not running away.

* HeKnowsTooMuch: Montone kills the berserk miner, presumably so he won't say anything about the drugs.

-->'''O'Niel:''' Because maybe they ''are'' right. They sent me here to this pile of shit because they think I belong here. I've got to find out if they're right. There's a whole machine that works because everyone does what they're supposed to. I found out I was supposed to be something I didn't like. That's what's in the program. That's my rotten little part in the rotten machine. Well, I don't like it, so... I'm going to find out if they're right.
-->'''Dr. Lazarus:''' Your wife is one stupid lady.

* FaceHeelTurn: [[spoiler: Deputy Ballard.]] Besides showing up at the last moment to [[spoiler:kill O'Niel himself,]] it's implied that he's Sheppard's [[TheMole inside man]], the one who steals O'Niel's spare shot gun and took out Spota.[[note]]Spota was being kept in jail and Montone had orders not to let anyone have access to him. Likewise, O'Niel was alone when he planted his spare shot gun. The only way anyone could have known was if he was followed or observed on the CCTV system. Only law enforcement would've had access. Meaning that Montone was killed by Spota, Ballard or both.[[/note]]

* FaceHeelTurn: [[spoiler: Deputy Ballard.]] Besides showing up at the last moment to [[spoiler:kill O'Niel himself,]] it's implied that he's Sheppard's inside man, the one who steals O'Niel's spare shot gun and took out Spota.

* FaceHeelTurn: [[spoiler: Deputy Ballard.]] Besides showing up at the last moment to [[spoiler:kill O'Niel himself,]] it's implied that he's Sheppard's inside man and was the one who steals O'Niel's spare shot gun and took out Spota.

* FaceHeelTurn: [[spoiler: Deputy Ballard.]]

* WhatYouAreInTheDark: O'Niel is given every chance to cooperate with the CorruptCorporateExecutive, is advised to do so by his own deputy and ridiculed by both his wife and the doctor that his attempt to clean up Con-Am 27 is pointless and futile. He, himself even has doubts about his own moral standings and if he's really a hero type, which he admits out loud to Lazarus when she asks him why he's not running away.

* MegaCorp: Con Am's unseen executives are willing to look the other way as long as mining production is up.

-->'''O'Niel''' (entering the company mess hall. Everyone falls silent): "I could use a little help." (no one speaks up.) "I thought so."
-->'''Rudd''': "''You're'' supposed to protect ''us''! You're the police. It's your job! Where are your men?"
-->'''O'Niel''': "My men? My men are shit."

* TheAlcatraz: O'Niel keeps his prisoners suspended in a spacesuit in airless [[ArtificialGravity zero-gravity cells]]. [[spoiler:Unfortunately the prisoner's helplessness makes it all too easy for someone to kill him by cutting though his air hose.]]

* DrJerk: Dr. Lazarus. "I'm unpleasant, I'm not stupid. I can count!" Fortunately she's a JerkWithAHeartOfGold since she's the only one who sticks by O'Niel when the chips are down.

* FantasticDrug: Polydichloric Euthimal is a powerful amphetamine that was tried out by the military to increase productivity. Unfortunately, it ends up driving its users psychotic after a number of months. Sheppard has it brought in to increase productivity, considering the deaths of the workers to be [[WeHaveReserves an acceptable loss]].
* FrontierDoctor: 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."

* MindRape: O'Niel warns his prisoner, kept in an airless zero-G cell, about this.
-->"You know, you're going to love being here, though most people do start to go a little crazy at night when they can't feel the floor. Oh, and sometimes the air tether gets knotted and the man suffocates but, ah, that doesn't happen too often."

* PreAsskickingOneLiner: O'Niel to Spota, who goes for a knife while O'Niel has a shotgun. O'Niel first brackets Spota with a few shots before taking aim squarely at his head. "Think it over."

--> "Because maybe they ''are'' right. They sent me here to this pile of shit because they think I belong here. I've got to find out if they're right. There's a whole machine that works because everyone does what they're supposed to. I found out I was supposed to be something I didn't like. That's what's in the program. That's my rotten little part in the rotten machine. Well, I don't like it, so... I'm going to find out if they're right."

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

* YouHaveGotToBeKiddingMe: Montone has this reaction when, during the morning reports, a deputy tells him that missing nuclear detonators were simply "found", but has no other details. Montone replies, "We're talking about nuclear detonators. You don't ''lose'' them and then ''find'' them. You lose your ''comb'' and then find it."

* MundaneDogmatic: ''Outland'' is a hard science fiction, subject to the ArtisticLicenseSpace exceptions above. 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 with wooden furniture, and the most hi-tech it gets are infrared scopes on said shotguns. It takes a year for spaceships to travel from Earth to Io, with the passengers in cryo-freezing units.

** ExplosiveDecompression: ''Outland'' loves this one! Frequent and messy!