In the early '80s, after Star Wars and its sequels showed that old plots done up as science fiction could make money faster than classic cars with new paint jobs, a slew of movies flowed from movie studios convinced that the far future was very profitable. Yet the sci-fi sheen that covered so many of the would-be Star Wars lacked the former's inventiveness and narrative drive. Director Peter Hyams gives Outland a brisk pace and an interesting atmosphere, but Outland, which he scripted, plays like High Noon in space. It has an evil boss Peter Boyle, a kindly doctor Frances Sternhagen, a bunch of scared miners, and hired assassins out to kill the marshal Sean Connery who stands up to them. Not much else is there, really. Though the special effects are good and Jerry Goldsmith's music has verve, the plot creaks along rather obviously, with the usual science fiction implausibilities. The addicted miners, for instance, die in gruesome and terribly obvious ways, making one wonder why they would take the drug and why nobody else noticed its use. Connery gives the movie a stalwart presence, but this was before he was reborn as a character actor and second leading man in The Untouchables, and the role isn't conceived with a lot of imagination.