Lockout is the poor man’s Taken, which is not a good start since Taken is the poor man’s Die Hard. It wastes its great premise, an outer space prison, with thinly drawn characters and a poorly constructed story. What could have been a tense claustrophobic thriller instead turns into something fun, but forgettable. Director Stephen St. Ledger, in his first full length feature, could take some lessons from Luc Besson, who came up with the idea. At least Besson knows how to craft a tense action sequence (Taken) or an interesting character (La Femme Nikita).
See how many clichés you can count: Snow (Guy Pearce) a wrongly convicted wisecracking CIA agent (1), is threatened with prison by a pencil pusher (Peter Stormare, 2) unless he performs one last act (3): free the President’s selfless daughter (Maggie Grace, 4) from the clutches of a space prison, which is using its incarcerated residents for testing by a corporation (5). Snow agrees, because his partner (6) is also on the same prison, and he contains the one piece of evidence that could prove Snow’s innocence (7).
7 clichés gives Lockout a formula from which it doesn’t stray. If done well, the movie could still be cool and somewhat meaningful. However, because the story is more interested in getting from point A to point B it sacrifices necessities to get people to care about what’s going on. The rushed story creates plot holes that could have been solved with an extra minute or two to slow down. For example, how can you smoke on a space station? How does Snow find a hair dye for Emilie so quickly? No time to explain, just know that there is a reason that can be explained in some other movie. These little plot holes and rushed story join to create a hole-filled ending that unfairly treats the inmates the “story” has set up and wraps up the Earthbound part in a nice package with characters making logic leaps to arrive at a “satisfying” ending.
Making matters worse is the fact that the ending doesn’t matter because the cardboard cutouts, I mean, characters, generate no feelings toward their ultimate fate in regards to the audience. Guy Pearce’s Snow comes the closest. His nonchalance provides some fun to the proceedings, and his scenes with Peter Stormare and Lennie James provide some fun winks to the action clichés; unfortunately he has no one to play off of in the space station. Maggie Grace looks as lifeless as the convicts in hypersleep. Her Emilie is a self-righteous brat, the kind Snow is forced to deal with at the beginning, so his character transformation seems unrealistic at best. Worse off, Grace learns nothing from Snow; she stays preachy throughout the film and gives the audience no reason to cheer for her safe return. Most of the inmates are not worth mentioning except Jason Gilgun, who plays the loose cannon with gusto. Unfortunately, they set him up against Grace instead of Pearce, and the fight between the two, which the audience is waiting to see, is unresolved, leaving his character solely as a plot device.
What keeps the audience from walking out of the film are the set designs and CGI. The space prison sets are interesting, and the scenes in space outside of the prison are pretty entertaining and well choreographed. For every good scene like that, there are others that don’t work as well. Snow’s escape from the initial set up is obviously fake and too much of an over-the-top flashy sequence, and as good as the prison set is, there is not enough claustrophobia to the proceedings. With zero trapped tension, the action sequences lack anxiety and payoff.
I hope this doesn’t shy moviemakers away from space colonies. The concept of Lockout is solid and the backdrop is there to create at least something fun. If the story was developed as carefully as the CGI was, Lockout could have been Taken meets Alien. However, as is, Lockout is a forgettable motion picture that only appeals to its fan base, and barely so because there are no R-rated death sequences to even enjoy. Next time, either write a better story, or sign up Nicholas Cage or Liam Neeson to give the fans a reason to see Lockout.