LOCKOUT

Escape From Outer Space

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Review

Snow is a man of action whose government has decided needs to spend 30 years in prison in prison after losing a vitally important suitcase full of state secrets. When the US President's daughter is taken hostage aboard orbital cryoprison MS-1 by members of an inmate breakout, Snow must get aboard the space station and save her. There is an additional incentive in that one of the inmates may have information that can exonerate him.

Producer/Director Luc Besson has an eclectic back catalogue that takes in both action films and science fiction. LOCKOUT is both and unsuccessful on both levels. A disgraced action man sent alone into a prison full of insane inmates to save a President, or in this case his daughter; the plotline is uncomfortably reminiscent of ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK with the island of Manhattan replaced by an orbital prison. Guy Pearce's Snow is no Snake Plissken, however. His performance borders on parody. It doesn't help that the script fails to give him any decent lines. The jokes he makes completely undermine the action man image. He can handle the action well enough, but even his undeniable acting chops can't bring the main character off the page.

Then again, all of the characters are as thin as the paper their dialogue was printed on. Lennie James and Peter Stromare are also great actors, but also fail to inject any depth into their untrustworthy and trustworthy spymaster roles. Later twists involving them come as no surprise. Maggie Grace is given an equally thin character as the President's daughter in distress and has even less ability to breathe life into her. The inmates fare no better, being faceless casualties to be killed off by the heroes whenever the pace flags. There's a stronger, more reasonable villain and a mad sidekick, but neither makes an impression.

The setting for all the nonsense is a space station that is well enough realised, both inside and out. The effects are just about the best things in the film. Even they suffer when they are put to work on a fall from orbit that takes less time than a stroll to the end of the garden and doesn't deign to consider the intense heat of re-entry as a minor inconvenience.

In the end, LOCKOUT is a silly film that isn't fun enough to distract from the shortcomings.