Nobody makes movies quite like Lockout anymore. The only person who does is Luc Besson, the French film maker who has been perpetually stuck in the 1990s, really the heyday of his significant career. Even as a producer he hires guys to make essentially the same movie with a slightly different coat of paint. Movies like Taken, The Transporter, and Colombiana. They all feature heroes with jaws like granite(even Zoe Saldana was a bit rough around the edges) who don't open their mouths unless it's to say something quippy. The bad guys come in only two flavors: either they look like Nazi skinheads who stumbled under the needle of a blind tattoo artist, or they look like extras from The Matrix. Shadowy government types lurk around every corner.
And yet there's a certain charm to a movie like Lockout, ridiculous in its overflowing machismo and mediocre special effects. Its a throwback to the days when every action hero didn't need to be that great of a guy, as long as they occasionally say something funny and get the girl in the end. Guy Pearce, who no longer remotely resembles the guy who starred in Christopher Nolan's Memento, plays a tough as nails, quick witted ex-government agent(aren't they all???) named Snow. When we meet him, in the whip smart and outrageously funny("I'm being beaten up by a guy named Rupert?") opening minutes, Snow is being interrogated(read: tortured) by the head of Secret Service, seeking answers for a crime Snow may or may not have committed. Railroaded, Snow is to be sent to prison on MS-One, a deep space prison full of the world's worst criminals.
Before any of that happens, the President's daughter, Emilie Warnock(Maggie Grace) goes on a diplomatic mission to MS One to make sure the deep sleep process the inmates are placed under is humane, but instead winds up a prisoner herself when a jailbreak occurs. Guess who gets to show up and reluctantly save the day? You get one guess. Snow gets to drop in like Snake Plissken, beat back the frantic, barely intelligible thugs running the joint, and secure himself a Presidential pardon if he gets the job done. It doesn't go well, and when he's not busy trying not to end up on the business end of some con's shank, he has to put up with the feisty Emilie who has her own agenda.
Pearce gives this film the comedic punch and necessary swagger it needs to overcome the shoddy special effects. Some of the jabs he hurls at Maggie Grace, with whom he shares some pretty good chemistry, will remind you of old school Bruce Willis. The problem is the film can't really keep up the pace established in the brilliant, action packed first five minutes. As the momentum staggers, the glaring weaknesses in the CG animated sequences become more of an issue. A Star Wars inspired aerial dogfight is embarrassingly bad, worse than what you can find in an average Playstation video game. There's also the issue of Snow not really having an enemy worth talking about. Grace, who played Taken's damsel in distress, is in much the same position here although her character proves to be more than capable.
None of this totally sinks the film, however, and for those who loved movies like Die Hard, Escape from New York or anything in the 80s with Carl Weathers or Arnold Schwarzenegger, you can do worse than spending 90 minutes in outer space with Lockout.
