Lazarus: You really think you’re making a difference?
O’Niel: [shrug]
Lazarus: Then why for god’s sake?
O’Niel: Because.. maybe they are right. They send me here to this pile of shit becaue maybe I belong here… I want to find out… well… if they’re right. There is a whole machine that works because everyone does what they are supposed to. I find out I was supposed to be something I didn’t like… that’s whats 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.
Lazarus: You’re wife is one stupid lady… You want to go get drunk?
O’Niel: Yes.
In the above section of dialogue in the film Outland the Federal Marshal O’Niel, played by Sean Connery, is explaining to the doctor why he doesn’t just leave the remote mining facility on one of the moons of Jupiter and go back to Earth with his beautiful wife and son. There are obvious connections between Outland and High Noon. Although High Noon is a moralistic celebration of the individual will, Outland is somewhat dystopian. There is a typical resolution in the end of the film but the struggle of the main character is less between O’Niel and the drug dealers and assasins, or even an existential turmoil, but between O’Niel and the ‘rotten system’ where everyone does what they are ‘supposed’ to do.