Set roughly 60 years into the future, Lockout is about an ex-government agent named Snow (Guy Pearce) who is being falsely incarcerated for killing a chief field operative. During this time, the President’s daughter, Emilie Warnock (Maggie Grace) is on a humanitarian mission to visit MS One, an international maximum security space prison where she will decide if it’s ok for the prison to open its doors to a population of 100,000 plus criminals. When a secret service agent loses his cool, a prisoner manages to escape and opens all the pods where the prisoners are currently held in stasis. In order to clear his name, but, more importantly, find out who set him up, Snow agrees to go to MS One on a suicide mission and retrieve the President’s daughter before she dies.
Sounds like a pretty awesome idea, right? I thought the idea of having prisoners riot in a maximum security prison in space was fascinating but due to poor execution and dialogue, the story goes in directions you wouldn’t expect and ends up ruining everything it had going for it.
Lockout is plagued by so many issues that I’d rather give you the good stuff right off the bat. Guy Pearce as Snow is the most badass and entertaining part of the film. He is extremely witty and has something funny to say almost every time he speaks mostly because he doesn’t give a shit about anybody else; he is either going to die in space or won’t find the person that could clear his name on earth.
Another great part is the deceptively awesome opening scene. The action sequence involves a motorized unicycle and car chase which sets up Snow’s background cut with shots of him being a wiseass during an interrogation (though the video game animation looked weird). It’s deceptive only because the film doesn’t continue with the same intense pace and awesome action as the beginning showcases. Lastly, all the space action sequences and effects look amazing. I was very impressed with the look and feel of MS One and all the space fighting and explosions that occurred both inside and outside the prison.
It amazes me that Luc Besson and the two directors and co-writers, James Mather and Stephen St. Leger, actually let this script go in as is. When you hear some of the dialogue you have to ask yourself, are they being serious right now? For example, Agent Langral (Peter Stormare) has a plan that involves storming the ship because the prisoners don’t realize they have the President’s daughter. The other main Agent, Shaw (Lennie James), says forget that, let’s just send one man in to rescue the one important hostage. So yes, one man versus 500 prisoners sounds like a much better idea than sending in the Marines to take control of the station and rescue her even though collateral damage is imminent.
Speaking of stupid characters, Emilie Warnock doesn’t come off as a humanitarian but rather an investigative journalist with power (which, for all I know, could be accurate). She is frustrating to deal with but what makes her stupid is that not only does she trust the prisoners to hold up their end of their bargain and not kill more hostages, but when given a chance to escape safely and quickly, she decides against it. It may seem like she’s thinking of others but, when thinking about Snow, she is being effin moronic and completely selfish. Has she never seen a crime flick or read about a hostage negotiation in the news?
Additionally, the reason any of this happens is because the secret service agent brought a gun into an area where they aren’t allowed. Then he tries acting like a bad cop because a prisoner won’t answer Emilie’s questions. I thought they only let intelligent people into the service but I was clearly wrong about that. **MINOR SPOILER** At least he makes up for it by killing himself to give Emilie “more oxygen.” **END SPOILER** Just remember we can’t blame Maggie and the other actors for this stupidity; it’s mostly the script and directors’ fault.
To cap the ludicrous nature of the film off, not only do we have the daughter of the President being held captive on a space prison controlled by the prisoners with people dying left and right, they decide that it would make things more interesting to have the station fall out of orbit and head towards earth. Now instead of a simple rescue mission, we have to prepare for Armageddon on the eastern seaboard. Why would you add this as a plot “twist” knowing that the end result would be the same? Did they think the effects from the scene would make people forget that this added “bonus” was an error they forgot to revise?
I’m not going to even talk about the idea of sky diving in space so I’ll wrap this up. Lockout is one of those cases where looks can be deceiving and the idea is better than the final product. The movie’s only saving grace is Guy Pearce’s awesome performance and hopefully he’ll become more of a household name after this one. When you leave the film you’ll wonder to yourself if you just saw a mainstream comedy or a sci-fi action thriller either way, the result is a mess.
Rating: A massive disappointment except for Guy Pearce and his character Snow-He was awesome! (4/10)
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