Lockout

Not many of you will have heard of Lockout. It popped up on my radar as a thriller, but it’s more of an action movie. It’s from France (from the mind of Luc Besson, who’s either a genius or Hollywood hack, depending on if you ask a normal person or if you ask a film critic), and it didn’t get a wide release here – same theatres as last week actually. We saw it in the same place as The Raid, actually.

The previews were for The Raven, Safe, The Avengers, and one of those terrible ‘found footage’ horror movies, called The Chernobyl Diaries. Three guesses as to where it’s located, and the first two don’t count. Anyway, we ended up tying, so no one won the preview game.

The movie itself opens with Guy Pierce (Snow) in an interrogation room after a botched assignment. As the official asks him question, instead of answering, the movie flashes back to what really happened, with Snow giving flippant, sardonic remarks upon coming out of them.

He’s accused of killing a spy sent to bring back some secrets, but he says he didn’t do it. There’s a flashback to a big long action sequence where he’s chased by a bunch of agency types. Oh, I should probably mention that it’s 2079, so the pursuit involves one wheeled motorcycles, futuristic helicopter-harrier mashups, and insanely fast speeds. Eventually, Snow manages to toss a briefcase to an accomplice who gets away on a train, while Snow is arrested.

He’s sentenced to 30 years in prison, but he won’t experience it. He’s to be put in stasis. Rip Van Winkle?

Meanwhile, a team of humanitarians is taking a trip to outer space, where a prison resides. It’s an experimental facility (basically, a beta test) for evil people to be put in stasis until their sentence is up. The group has concerns that stasis has incredibly negative side effects, and the prisoners are being secretly tested to study the effects of stasis for the basis of long-term space travel. Oh yes, the team is led by the President’s daughter, Emilie (played by Maggie Grace, who’s been in two other Mindless Movies – Faster and Knight and Day).

While the team is there, Emilie interviews a psychotic inmate. He manages to get free and awakens all the rest of the inmates. Oops. Now only one man can save them. But he’s a rogue element, living on the edge. He’s Snow – Walking Cliché.

The movie takes off from there, with action, chase scenes, and enough one-liners to make Ahnold jealous. Pierce isn’t quite up to Ahnold’s legacy, but he’s definitely in the Bruce Willis mould (only with more hair).

The science is … iffy, at best. Ignore it, or it’ll bug you for a very long time. Just view this as the movie that science abandoned, and you should be all right. It’s all about fun, and it sure is a lot of fun. The lines are pretty good, although Pierce gets most of them. Grace gets in one or two, and there are some supporting characters that get the rest.

It’s a ridiculous movie. If you’re going to see it, remember to keep that in mind. Logic, out the window. It’s unashamedly pulp, and a whole lot of fun. I’d say it’s actually a theatre movie, but that’s because it was actually a lot funnier than I thought it would be. You may think differently, but once again, try not to get bogged down by all the small stuff. ALL the small stuff.