Escape from MS One
When the President's daughter Emilie (Maggie Grace) is sent on a goodwill mission to outer space maximum security prison MS One she goes there as she believes that someone is using the cryogenically frozen prisoners as guinea pigs. But whilst there one of the prisoners manages to stage a coup, releasing all the other prisoners and putting Emilie's life in danger. It is too dangerous for the US Marines to go up there and there is only one man who is capable of rescuing Emilie. That man is former CIA Operative Snow (Guy Pearce) who is currently taking a beating under interrogation as a suspected traitor and he is going to need some serious persuading to risk his life.
If I was a fifteen year old boy just starting the fabulous journey into cinema I would love "Lockout", in fact I don't think there is anything a fifteen year old me would not like about this movie. It has a futuristic look, an attractive Maggie Grace, a heroic wise cracking hero in Guy Pearce and it moves at such a pace there is no time in between the action, the wise cracks and the moments of humour to worry about the story. Heck if there is a split second of down time you have the futuristic look with some nice CGI effects to keep you entertained.
But it is a long time since I was a fifteen year old boy with my first video recorder who would buy any videos he could afford whilst taping everything he could off of TV and what I got from "Lockout" was a derivative action movie which kind of reminded me of "Escape from New York" although in truth it reminded me of more than a dozen movies. Yet don't mistake my flashing of the word derivative with disappointed as "Lockout" is fun, easy to watch entertainment for a Friday night when I don't want to be challenged by a movie which demands me to concentrate or think. As such it doesn't throw me any curve balls, just lots of large action, lots of special effects, lots of witty one liners and well nothing I didn't want to see.
But here is for me the interesting thing, the one thing I can say about "Lockout" which makes it stand out and that is the casting of Guy Pearce as not only is the role of Snow the sort of thing Stallone might have played but it is not the sort of popcorn role that I expect an actor like Guy Pearce to go for. Yet Pearce is fantastic in the role of the wise cracking Snow who manages to pull a one liner out of thin air every time he opens his mouth and when he leaps from a tall building to fly through a window in an adjacent building he only ends up hitting one which is shut and tumbles to the floor. Basically Pearce brings both action and humour to the movie in a way I have not seen him do before and he does it so well.
What this all boils down to is that "Lockout" is nothing new, it is just a CGI update on a very familiar sort of story but it works in a simply entertaining way with lots of fun action, lots of one liners and an entertaining performance from Guy Pearce as well as an equally entertaining out there one from Joseph Gilgun.