Outland 4K (1981/Ladd Company/Warner/Arrow 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray)

4K Picture: B+* Sound: B Extras: B+** Film: B

When Alien and Moonraker were big hits (along with the first two Star Wars films, of course) some of the producers of Blade Runner launched Peter Hyams' Outland 4K (1981,) a grossly underrated, rough and highly influential (compare to James Cameron's Aliens or Paul Verhoeven's Robocop) space thriller with Sean Connery as a Police Marshall on a Jupiter mining colony. He is there to investigate why workers are dying, only to find they are taking a deadly new drug with insanity as a side effect.

As he gets closer to what is really going on, it becomes mostly like High Noon in space when he lands up taking on the whole dealer ring himself. Stunning sets, complex model work and other special visual tricks as enduring as any film in the genre, along with production design that has aged (save the old analog TV and computer screens, the few things that date the film) very to extraordinarily well.

Connery's Marshall O'Niel is often rough, even as a family man, but a good man. At first, the investigation goes well and normal, quickly meeting up with the very medically knowledgeable Dr. Marian Lazarus (the always great Frances Sternhagen) starting with examining what is left of the dead bodies of those who went insane and died horrible deaths. Then he starts meeting more people on Jupiter's moon Io (the in joke being no one could live or work on that moon since it is constantly squeezed and unsqueezed by the planet's gravity!) and more workers start to land up dead, but the deaths suddenly become more suspicious.

So eventually, it takes a page from the all-time Western classic High Noon, though some of the politics involved are different in 1981 than they would have been in 1952, but that's a separate essay. The production does reflect a time when Hollywood (et al) was much more ambitious in trying to deliver something smart and original, or at least original enough. Also, this is still one of the early Science fiction films to get a R-rating after Alien, so its more set in a world of grown adults (remember them?) and especially these days, that's a big plus.

When it was promoted, I thought Warner did a decent job, but using High Noon to promote it had limits since Heaven's Gate had just bombed and the Western was dead one way or another, while the other shortcut to thinking on some of the public's perception of the release was seeing the add and saying something akin to 'oh, they just stuck him in a movie like that because Roger Moore just did Moonraker' as if making a movie is like ordering a pizza. Countering these two misperceptions would have helped, if Warner were aware of them. Instead, the film did not do the business it should have, despite how good it and Connery are.

For Connery, it was his best leading turn since The Great Rain Robbery (1978) and was paving his way to a permanent comeback with films like Time Bandits (1981,) Name Of The Rose, Highlander (both 1986) and his James Bond return in Never Say Never Again (1983). Then he'd get his Oscar for De Palma's The Untouchables in 1987. Outside of his best Bond work, his portrayal of Marshall O'Niel is actually one of his best roles ever, balancing his underrated acting ability (which he shows off to great effect here) with his physicality and action chops. To show he was more than a commercial action actor, this is one of the film's I would use to prove my point on that.

For director Hyams, this is even better than similar films in the genre he made like Capricorn One (1978, weighted down by O.J. Simpson being in the cast,) Van Damme film Timecop (1994) and 2010 (1984,) his ambitious attempt at a sequel to Kubrick's 2001 that had at least some potential but still did not work and has not aged well. For me, this is among his best films, also including The Star Chamber (1983,) End Of Days (1999, one of Schwarzenegger's few great, enduring films) and his highly underrated 1990 remake of Narrow Margin with Gene Hackman and Anne Archer.

The rest of the supporting cast is solid, has faces you might recognize from the time (even if you could not name them) and includes Peter Boyle, Steven Berkoff, John Ratzenberger, Manning Redwood, Clarke Peters, Kika Markham, Hal Galili, Stuart Mulligan, Angus MacInnes, Norman Chancer, Eugene Lipinski, future crime writer Nicholas Barnes and James B. Sikking making another one of his acting turns in a Hyams film.

*The 2160p HEVC/H.265, 2.35 X 1, Dolby Vision/HDR (10; Ultra HD Premium)-enhanced Ultra High Definition image is a solid improvement over the decent Blu-ray and definitely versus the old DVD version, one of the worst-ever in the format. Though some shots look soft in parts from the anamorphic lens, most shots here are amazing, color, depth and detail are the best I have ever seen the film outside of film prints and even has more than a few demo shots for your 4K set-up.

Director of Photography Stephen Goldblatt, A.S.C., B.S.C., does some amazing work here, as he has in films like Coppola's Cotton Club, Breaking Glass, Batman Forever, The Hunger, Prince Of Tides, Closer and the first two Lethal Weapon films. Lensed in real anamorphic Panavision lenses and shot to look big, you will find some serious demo shots for your system here, even with a few soft and dated-looking parts that are just the way the film was made. Some of Goldblatt's most underrated work is on display.

The lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mix sounds pretty much like the same upgrade from the original 4.1, 6-track Dolby 70mm blow-up magnetic soundmaster with MegaSound bass (a format Warner tried out on a few of their films at the time, like Altered States, Blade Runner and Superman II) that was an early attempt to surpass Sensurround as what we now know as LFE (low frequency effects aka .1) sound. I thought a DTS: X or Dolby Atmos upgrade might have been pushing it and that's likely correct, so some sound is a little lower in volume than others (some of the dialogue) at times, but has held up from not showing its age too much, while Jerry Goldsmith's impressive score holds up well. Some smart sound editing and design too, once you start watching, it just gets more and more involving. Also included is the original stereo with Dolby A-type analog Dolby System noise reduction with Pro Logic surrounds that is fine, but not always as good as the 5.1 mix. Try both.

**Extras are many, a huge jump from the older Blu-ray and not only include some great pluses only in this Limited Edition set, but include a brand new 4K restoration from the original 35mm camera negative by Arrow Films

• An exceptionally excellent archive audio commentary by writer-director Peter Hyams

• Brand new audio commentary by film critic Chris Alexander

• A Corridor of Accidents, a newly filmed interview with writer-director Peter Hyams

• Outlandish, a newly filmed interview with director of photography Stephen Goldblatt

• Introvision: William Mesa on Outland, a newly filmed interview with visual effects artist William Mesa

• No Place for Heroes, a brand new appreciation by film scholar Josh Nelson

• Hollywoodland Outland, a brand new visual essay by film historian Howard S. Berger

• Theatrical trailer

• Image gallery

• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Pye Parr

• Double-sided foldout poster featuring the original one-sheet (bragging about the 70mm Dolby sound) on one side and newly commissioned artwork by Pye Parr

• and an illustrated collector's booklet featuring new writing by film critics Priscilla Page and Brandon Streussnig.

Outland 4K is at least a minor classic of the genre, very influential, one of Connery's most underrated films and now, you can experience why.

- Nicholas Sheffo