10 Best Westerns NOT Set In The Old West

Sean Connery as a veteran marshal. A corrupt mining facility. A violent drug gang. A remake of a classic Old West vehicle, High Noon. All of this and more, set on Io... a moon orbiting Jupiter. What more could you want?

Described by director Peter Hyams and critics at the time of its release as a "space Western", Outland hit theatres in 1981 and managed, miraculously, to capture the essence of what made High Noon so great. There's a great deal of palatable tension, some brilliant characters (Connery is always fun, let's be fair), and a typical macho-man protagonist going against some shady happenings on an outer-space mining facility.

On top of that, there's hitmen, space travel, politics, corruption (a recurring theme on this list) and betrayal.

Taking the classic formula of the Western and literally moving it through time and space gives the film an extra level of intensity - the classic adage of "In space no one can hear you scream", only with drugs and guns and a lot less aliens. It's solid fun, if slightly leave-your-brain-at-the-door in parts, but when a film is this slick, cool and weird, that doesn't greatly matter.