Outland

In interviews, Peter Hyams likes to say that in the late 1970s, he really wanted to make a western, since this genre has influenced classic American cinema like no other. Hollywood was always also the fight for justice and revenge in the dusty expanses of the western United States. But around 1980 there was no money to be made with westerns, so Hyams used a trick that George Lucas had previously employed quite successfully. His story about a marshal who takes on a corrupt and powerful executive is not set somewhere in Texas, but in a titanium mine on one of Jupiter’s moons. This provides Hyams variation of the cinematic classic »High Noon« with a very special atmosphere. In »Outland«, past and present become one. The American longing for crossing new frontiers provides fertile ground for exploitation and oppression. Which is why the marshal, played by Sean Connery, does not primarily fight for law and order, as Gary Cooper once did. His opponent is the capitalist system, which puts people under pressure until they literally explode.