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OUTERWORLD
Produced by John R. Ellis and Philip Cook
Directed, Written, Edited, and Photographed by Pillip CookPentan - Tracy Davis
Brickman - Hans Bachman
John Moesby - Michael Mack
Kuriyama - Ron Ikejiri
Robert Thornton - Rick FoucheuxIn 1995, Philip Cook's recently renamed feature, OUTERWORLD, played to the world on the then new Sci-Fi Channel as STAR QUEST. Completed in 1989, Cook has gone back and remastered the movie adding in some George Lucas-like computer effect to enhance the film's climactic moments.
Reading Cook's website, one learns that the film cost roughly $175,000. Upon viewing the film, one sees that all that money is up on the screen. Cook's ambitious vision required 30 hand built sets and miniature environments, and 270 visual effects. Without having consulted Cook, it looks to me like the remastered version contains a few touched-up shots scattered throughout, with the real work going towards the space fighter dogfight at the film's climax. Sometimes the clean-cut digital effects clash with the murky older footage, but I was so often left in awe of Cook's ambitious vision that I didn't mind one bit. In every frame there's something new to blow your mind. I wish just a fraction of today's independent cinema mavens showed as much as a tenth of Cook's desire and drive to produce a quality movie.
I first became aware of Cook's work during the summer of ‘03 when I took a chance rental on DESPIRE at my local Video Warehouse. At the time I was plagued with a mountain of backyard epics by Weekend Spielbergs looking to make the next Halloween. None of the movies showed the slightest desire to adhere to basic cinema conventions like plot or character. Generic Masks stalked insipid teenagers - that's it. I was ready to throw in my reviewing towel when DESPIRE blew me away (read the review to learn how).
If I thought that movie showed gusto, then it's nothing compared to OUTERWORLD. What Cook did in the digital realm for DESPIRE, he did almost 15 years before with only his bare hands, a pair of scissors, and some Elmer's glue (I'm exaggerating, of course, but hopefully you catch my meaning of how awestruck I am of this movie).
Contrasting Cook's epic scope, his writing style is tight and lean. At a brisk 78 minutes, he gives viewers only the core of each scene, sticking to the rule that states you enter a scene at the last possible second and exit at the earliest. No long, wordy diatribes to pad the running time, no lingering static shots with loaded heads or tails, just economical, to-the-point storytelling.
We learn from a short exchange that Pentan is a genetically engineered spy. Beautiful and athletic, she's been trained to use her sexiness as a weapon to gain and trade secrets and data. And like any slave, she wants her freedom. When she sees her chance to escape the yoke of her masters, she takes it.
Her first order of business is to get the dog collar-like device out of her neck. To do so, she must travel the galaxy to find her creator. He'll know what to do, creators always do. Why the device has a countdown, I'll never know. I figure that a corporation like Kuriyama's would simply blow off her head the moment she went rogue, but that would negate our story (and is really my only complaint).
To make her journey, Pentan hires the Han Solo-esque Brickman to pilot her across the solar system. And like any man who comes in contact with Pentan, he's quickly under her spell. It's what she was created for and has years of practice doing; to make men fall for her. Her charm comes so naturally that she doesn't need to seduce Brickman, all Pentan has to do is be her natural self.
It's apparent that Pentan doesn't like who she is. Not so much in what she does, but that she's never had a chance to shape her own personality. Cold and shrewd, she doesn't trust herself anymore than she trusts those around her. It's how she was molded. But she wants to trust, and she wants to love, but like the saying goes, you have to love yourself before you can love anyone else.
Brickman wears his heart on his sleeve. It doesn't take him long before he turns into a Joe Average high schooler fixated on the unattainable goddess sitting in the next isle. But he's also a businessman with a job to do, and getting Pentan to safety takes priority over his hormones, as much as he'd rather have it the other way around.
Kuriyama is the head of one of the world's largest corporations, and is motivated entirely by the dollar, and Pentan could potentially cost the company billions. While on a mission she learns the location of a deep space salvage mission, and commits it to memory. It's the reason her head isn't blown off the second she heads out on her own, but it's little more than a Hitchcockian MacGuffin to get the movie rolling. If they kill her, they don't get the salvage operation off the ground. All of the action loses its weight when you know the attackers can't do any harm to the hero.
The contrast between corporate greed and personal freedom is downplayed, a credit to Cook's writing style. In this instance it would be beneficial for Kuriyama to barter, but he would rather come out ahead financially AND have his agent in check. A matter of having his cake and eating it too. Pentan wants nothing more than the freedom to explore the person she COULD become, and sees the information she holds as a means to an end. She could care less one way or the other about who actually owns the rights to the first-come salvage rights, but she knows that the information could provide her freedom.
In a movie like this, we know the ending long before we actually see it. But when that final kiss between Pentan and Brickman comes, after they've risked their lives to save each other and do away with the baddies, it's not that they're magically in love as movies often show, but that they've earned the chance to try to be in love. OUTERWORLD explores the chances one is willing to take to find one's self, which I think some of the best science fiction deals with, such as GATTACA, my favorite science fiction film of the last decade. The core of science fiction isn't to show what the future will potentially be like, but to show what humanity will potentially be like. And it's something Philip Cook understands and explores with both his mini-masterpieces, DESPIRE and OUTERWORLD. His vision isn't just limited to the look of his movies, but encompasses their hearts as well.