Country:
France
Starring:
Guy Pearce
Maggie Grace
Peter Stormare
Lennie James
Directed By:
Stephen St-Leger
James Mather
Synopsis:
In 2079, a new kind of prison is created, even more secure than super max penitentiaries. It's a prison in space, orbiting around earth, where prisoners are put in stasis (cryogenic sleep, for the non-initiated) for the duration of their sentences. The President of the United States happens to have a very caring, engaged daughter who's worried about the ethical use of stasis. She travels to the prison and organizes an interview with an inmate. Things don't go as planned over there and she finds herself stranded in space, in the middle of a prison riot with the most dangerous criminal in the world. One man, destined to the space prison anyway, has the balls and enough incentive to go after her.
The first ten minutes of LOCKOUT are extremely seducing. A double agent named Snow (Pearce) is wisecracking throughout a very brutal investigation and telling a story about being set up by an agency and having to fight his way out. Think Philip K. Dick meets Elmore Leonard. Amazing, isn't it? It got me quivering with anticipation. It's a Luc Besson original idea, how could it go wrong? Well, you got it right there. It's a Luc Besson original idea. His latest ventures have been all flat and uninspired. The first ten minutes of LOCKOUT are the only ten minutes where there seems to have been effort put into it. While it always gravitates around interesting concepts, the movie doesn't exploit any of them and it's not because it's a creative miss (these things happen in a director/screenwriter's career). It just doesn't bother doing the effort. Not even Guy Pearce's valiant efforts can save the day.
As soon as the action is transported to MS One, the orbiting prison, things fall apart. There is no clear reason for it, except for laziness. The setting is not disastrous, but it's unappealing for a science-fiction movie. Everything is blue and orange, like in so many other movies *. The jailbreak scene is laughably bad, in the sense that the most secure prison in the world is almost unguarded. Hydell (Joseph Gilgunn), the first escaped convict, is running through empty corridors over empty corridors before falling on...people with lab coats. Prison break scenes are supposed to be action scenes, no? This problem plagues the whole movie, wherever there is a big action scene set up, it turns into an underwhelming two minutes long fiasco. They have the most inefficient prison guards in the world's most dangerous prison. There's no excuse for this. Director Stuart Gordon and Christophe Lambert have set the standard for science-fiction prison break movie twenty freakin' years ago with FORTRESS. This is not living up to it.
Another issue I have with LOCKOUT is the sexism. Poor Maggie Grace. She's not THAT bad ** of an actress, but she's being typecasted in those awful stereotypes all the times. Her character Emily Warnock is an idiot nymph who, unlike all the men in the movie, doesn't understand that the world is a terrible place and makes those selfless, but oh-so-counter-intuitive and stupid choices. For example, Emily and Snow reach the escape pods as an army of angry, horny and reckless prisoners chase them down. Snow wants to shove her in a pod, but SHE REFUSES because there are lives to save. The old saying that wants that you can't help people if you can't help yourself is true. No need to be a man to double agent, even less a man to know this. Whoever wrote the character of Emily Warnock just made an assassination attempt on my suspension of disbelief. Also, why did the only two talking prisoners were Scottish? Where did it come from? Is it too much to ask to have a bad guy who's NOT a foreigner?
There are redeeming factors to LOCKOUT, but not many. Guy Pearce is his usual brilliant self. The action hero part suits him remarkably well. Peter Stormare's performance is also worthy of praise. He's a criminally underrated actor. His morally dubious government agent was perhaps the most convincing character of the whole movie. Joseph Gilgun is also a name to watch for. His character wasn't too subtle, but he gave it an edge. Overall, it was far from brilliant. There is no sense of scope and awe, like good space movies have (Moon, Event Horizon, 2001: Space Odyssey) and it never commits into its actions scenes like classics in the genre (Fortress, Escape from N.Y/L.A) do. It's too bad, because the project had tremendous potential, but it didn't receive the love it should've had. I can dig films who don't appeal to my brain, but films who deliberately think I'm stupid and ask me for money are a pet peeve of mine. It's not that bad, let's say to watch in a social situation, but do yourself a favor and don't seek this movie out.
SCORE: 49%
* The reason for that is that they are two extremely contrasting colors. I wish there was a smarter explanation.
** OK, she's not great either.