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Horse opera into space opera, Western righteousness for a futuristic view of capitalism, plus ça change... Titanium mining on one of Jupiter's moons, where exploited proles are given black-market dope to increase production. A wave of suicidal crackups, "it happens here," the marshal (Sean Connery) is expected to look the other way and instead upsets the corrupt apple cart. "Just what we need around here, a goddamn hero." His investigation finds a line of narcotics distributed from above, the manager (Peter Boyle) sends for some assassins to silence the stubborn snoop. His wife (Kika Markham) is a pleading visage on a flickering monitor, he has a much sturdier ally in the snide scientist (Frances Sternhagen). "That's pretty good. Playing by yourself and losing." Peter Hyams forging into the technocratic Eighties while hanging on to the paranoid Seventies, Scott's Alien and Schrader's Blue Collar are the pillars. Metallic pressure reigns in the industrial inferno, workers have glorified cages to sleep in and a dingy tavern with erotic entertainers in laser spotlights. "A whole machine works because everybody does what they're supposed to," to seek justice is to induce a short circuit. The High Noon ticking clock goes digital, gunslingers arrive not by train but by interplanetary shuttle, volcanic rock and looming orange globe replace the prairie vista. (James B. Sikking's bearded resemblance to Arthur Hunnicutt adds to the feeling of a sci-fi oater.) Death provides the only poetic touches allowed in this dystopia (blood drips upwards in the zero-gravity splatter chamber), hard-boiled professionalism carries the day all the same. "Don't misconstrue. I'm not displaying character, just temporary insanity." A dependable bedrock formation for Hyams' own 2010, its inherent satire wickedly heightened in Verhoeven's RoboCop. Cinematography by Stephen Goldblatt. With Clarke Peters, Steven Berkoff, John Ratzenberger, Bill Bailey, and Nicholas Barnes.
--- Fernando F. Croce |