Lockout
Directed By: James
Mather and Stephen St. Leger
Written By: James
Mather, Stephen St. Leger, and Luc Besson, from an original idea by Besson.
Starring Guy
Pearce, Maggie Grace, Peter Stormare, Joseph Gilgun, Lennie James, and Vincent
Regan.
Director of Photography: James Mather, Editors: Camille
Delamarre and Eamonn Power, Production Design: Romek Delmata, Original Music:
Alexandre Azaria
During the
penultimate scene of Lockout, a high
concept B-movie action flick, a character monologues to our hero, the grimy
renegade Snow (Guy Pearce). “You’re all relics of a dead time!” he posits. This
character (going nameless for spoiler sake) seems to simply be delivering plain
dialogue that the screenplay requires in order to make him out to be the
villain. Or it could be a meta-commentary on the whole feel of Lockout, which borrows heavily from the
B-movies of the 1980s.
The problem
is, however, Lockout isn’t sure whether
to fully embrace its own absurdity, and meanders between the two worlds.
Produced by Luc Besson (The Fifth Element),
Lockout may have fared better if it
had been called Space Jail, as a
number of other film critics have declared. Lockout
certainly is a film destined for late night TV marathon status; it’s about a
jail full of dangerous criminals, but the jail is in space! What else do you
need to know? And while Lockout isn’t
sure what it really wants to be, it manages to be a distractingly good time.
