Anyone with a passing familiarity of superhero movie development knows about Supermax, the Green Arrow vehicle that would drop the Batman knockoff into a prison filled with supervillains. Of course, anybody who knows about Supermax also knows that it has been stuck in development hell for years.
Not content to let such a juicy story lay dormant, producer Luc Besson and co-conspirators James Mather and Stephen St. Leger devised Lockout as the answer to moviegoers who are either desperate for Supermax or just desperate for some old-fashioned B-movie hackery.
Sixty years in the future, where technology has obviously advanced so quickly that the world has finally become the set of Blade Runner, ex-CIA operative, professional asshole, and new member of the one-named icon club, Snow, played by the under appreciated but never underrated Guy Pearce—seriously when is this guy going to blow up in America—has been caught by some shady Secret Service heavies, led by Peter Stormare’s gravelly Langral, after being framed for the murder of a former CIA partner. Convicted without any sniff of a fair trial, Snow is sentenced to 30 years on space station prison, MS-1, where prisoners are turned into Matrix batteries for the duration of their term. Just before Snow is shipped off, First Daughter, Emilie Warnock (Maggie Grace), makes a jaunt to the Supermax in the Sky to see if prisoners are being treated fairly in a prison where they are frozen and effectively mindwiped for decades. A piece of hell breaks loose when Misfits star Joseph Gilgun’s creepy one-eyed convict gets the drop on Warnock’s entourage and proceeds to unfreeze hundreds of prisoners, including the shrewd Alex (Vincent Regan). With the President’s daughter trapped, Snow is offered a deal: infiltrate Ms-1, save the First Daughter, and walk free. All he has to do is make his way through a prison suspended thousands of miles above Earth’s orbit that is filled with the worst criminals alive. No problem.
From Lockout’s first scene, it’s clear that St. Leger and Mather have transposed a video game onto celluloid. The stench of cheap CGI is thick on this flick. St. Leger and Mather’s ADD editing distorts action into and endless stream whipping lights and any object with weight bends into a rubbery cartoon. It’s amazing Lockout wasn’t touted as a green screen production because that may have marginally improved its Q rating. While this approach renders most of the action in Lockout fairly devoid of substance and tension, St. Leger and Mather make up for it by keeping the pace quick. Lockout breezes breathlessly from scene to scene—you’re welcome for the pull quote. The pace saves the audience from thinking more deeply about the plot than Lockout’s creators did.
St. Leger and Mather may not put their absolute best foot forward on Lockout, but at least some the cast tries to elevate the material. Pearce, unsurprisingly, proves generally effective as an even more dickish riff on Han Solo than the original as the rakish Snow. His self-centered antics are so pitched that audiences will either love the character or hate him, which is as much as an actor can ask from their audience. With so much of the film resting on Pearce’s shoulders the rest of the cast seem content to fulfill the guidelines of their respective archetypes. Grace is alternatively self-righteous and panicked then competent as the First Daughter. Stormare dials up the slime and slithers as shadowy Secret Service head Langral. Reagan and Gilgun scowl and twitch, respectively, as only classic B-grade villains can. Only Lennie James steps up and gives some depth and personality to his role as Snow’s nonplussed handler, Shaw.
The efforts of the cast and crew aside, Lockout is exactly the type of B—knocking on C—grade entertainment that thrives in January, which is surprising considering its release between one juggernaut—The Hunger Games—and a nuclear warhead—Avengers. Sadly, as theaters prepare to get glutted with summer blockbusters, Lockout will probably fall into oblivion, but not for lack of trying and succeeding at being the middling, forgettable slice of entertainment it was destined to be.
Yin: C-level direction and performances, with a few exceptions, and B-movie ethos as to be expected from Luc Besson’s film factory.
Yang: Pearce and Shaw offer some solid, engaging performances that match the material, and the quick pacing keeps the proceedings from dragging unnecessarily.
In-Between: In the year 2012, should we even believe that world will change so significantly in the next 50-100 years that it will make some of the technology in these films anything other than pipe dreams?
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