“I’m being beaten up by a guy named ‘Rupert’?” questions Snow (Guy Pearce) incredulously while cuffed and under interrogation. There isn’t much to like about Lockout, which is probably why I appreciated more than I should have; what there is to like is almost entirely derived from the devil-may-care antagonistic performance of Guy Pearce. Oh yeah, Guy was destined for bigger things once upon a time, what happened?
Lockout is based on an original story by Luc Besson. Of course, this story is original in the same way that you are an original person, having sprung from thin air. A convicted man is offered freedom by extracting the President’s daughter from a closed prison colony taken over by the hostiles. That’s nothing like Escape from New York. “But this time we’re in SPACE!” Yeah, that makes a big difference, like being forced to watch the British Open instead of the Masters.
Guy Pearce gets to be Snake Plissken, or Officer John McClane depending on your perspective – he’s got a “f*** you” punchline for, I’m estimating, roughly 80% of dialogue thrown his way. In fact, the movie falters most when 1) Snow is not on screen or 2) action happens, thus eliminating the need for dialogue. It might have been a mistake to make Lockout an action movie. It’s much better when Guy is being an ass; the rest made me scratch my head repeatedly. Emily Warnock (Maggie Grace) gets the inglorious Olivia Wilde role of “woman in a man’s film.” And if she were vaguely remarkable, that might mean something.
Lockout doesn’t lack for head-scratching idiocies. Even were it not a blatant Escape from New York rip-off, there would still be irksome details out the wazoo: the chain-of-command goes from the President to the Secret Service? A space prison is equipped with anti-aircraft weaponry? There’s a button you press that makes all the prison cells open at once? Now that just seems like a design flaw. How about people exiting a space station IN SPACE and plummeting like rocks off a cliff? Or how about more subtle details like the fact that 70 years in the future, not only is the President white, but so is the entire cabinet … or another not-so-subtle tidbit like every accented player in the program is a bad guy, while us spreakin’ good ‘Mercan talk done all be right good guys? Be very careful to suppress that accent, Guy, you’ll end up in the orange jumpsuit permanently.
This is a fantastic MST3K film; one I look forward to being shredded in audio overdub form in the near future, like the future when we put prison colonies in space station form and have the President’s daughter study them for her master’s thesis.
Rated PG-13, 95 Minutes
D: James Mather, Stephen St. Leger
W: Stephen St. Leger, James Mather & Luc Besson
Genre: Copycat
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Rogue wannabes
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Scientists
This review made my head itchy.
I, too, am looking forward to the MST3K-ization of this one!