Like Arkham Asylum, except without that pesky plot to get in the way.
"Lockout" is a moving starring Guy Pearce, an actor I respect mainly for his portrayal of Leonard Shelby in "Memento." Thus ends the portion of this review where I can be nice.
Just about everything in this movie is done wrong. This movie imitates "Die Hard," in the same way that everybody imitated Austin Powers for a few years. We have our action hero, Snow, who is "the only man for the job" for reasons that are not explained to us. Because he's a criminal under federal investigation for murder? No, that would make him the last person they would want for the job.
Anyway, there's a big super prison in space that puts all of the inmates in stasis sleep to prevent violence. The president's daughter is sent up to investigate the humaneness of the prison's treatment and is given an interview with one of the inmates. Now, the prison warden, who is attempting to convince the president's daughter to APPROVE the space prison, decides to send out the craziest Scottish fuck in the whole prison. By the way, they already built an enormously big prison in space. I think they already have approval.
So this one inmate manages to steal one gun and shatter straight through every nonexistent security protocol in the place. Seriously, he kills half a dozen people and blows up a room, then marches into a security room to beat up a dumb ass that had no clue anything had gone wrong. REALLY? How does that make any sense? The inmate then orders the dumb ass to wake up every single prisoner in the building, to which said dumb ass complies, because there are no security measures to prevent this from happening. All of this is done by one psychopath with a gun and no former planning. It is absolutely laughable how pathetic this prison is, much more so for what is supposed to be the most advanced super prison ever built.
So now, Guy Pearce has to fly up to the space prison and save the president's daughter. This involves crawling through different levels and air ducts, murdering guards at every opportunity, and making an endless stream of wisecracks to his black friend on the other end of a radio. See where I'm getting the "Die Hard" ripoff? The only thing they forgot to steal from "Die Hard" was a coherent plot, competent pacing, and a decent goddamn movie.
A bunch of stuff happens, people are killed, main characters escape death, and two hours of my life are gone. There's a weird twist ending in which the president's daughter magically solves the secret of some subplot that nobody cares about, the black good guy turns out to be bad because he knew the combination to a briefcase or something, I really don't care. It's all a bunch of bullshit. And I think they even had the audacity to try to set up a sequel, but it's possible that the writing was so bad I didn't even realize that they were trying to tie up loose ends.
This film is truly not worth your time. Pearce's acting is stilted and unoriginal, pacing is crap, the plot makes no sense, the writing is terrible, events happen left and right with no coherent feel, and even the special effects are nauseatingly bad. Truly a waste of time. I don't feel like I need to say it, but "Lockout" earns a solid No One Should See It.
Until next time, what are your thoughts on the movie? I love to hear the opinions!
-kmaker
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