"Lockout" Review

There's dumb fun and then there's dumb so dumb that it ain't no fun. Lockout is a prime example of the latter. Another one of Luc Besson's miniscule ideas that I swear he must jot on a napkin while lunching, it's the brain-dead story of a disgraced government agent, suspected of murder and treason, who is forced into rescuing the President's daughter when she is taken hostage by prisoners in a maximum security prison she was visiting for humanitarian reasons.

Did I mention the prison was in space? Yeah, that's kind of important.

Even by the loose standards of dumb sci-fi action movies, Lockout is so packed with "Huh? What?!? Are you kidding me?!?!?" scenarios that it's impossible to suspend disbelief because it's being otherwise shived and tossed out an airlock. I can almost buy that there are prisoners so dangerous that they need to be kept someplace where escape is impossible - Men in Black III worked that angle - but why put them in space when they're also in suspended animation; you know, asleep, like in Minority Report?! They have a tossed-away idea that there may be an Evil Corporate Scheme to use these animalistic prisoners as guinea pigs for long-term space testing, but it's never pondered beyond it's sole mention. There are space fighters and all sorts of stuff that's indicates more of a Battlestar Galactica level of technology than Earth in 2079. Why does a space prison need defensive gun turrets? Who's going to come up and cause trouble?

The only bright spots are Guy Pearce's smart-ass tough guy turn as the reluctant rescuer and Maggie Grace (Lost; Liam Neeson's hapless daughter in the Taken series) as the First Daughter who is tougher and savvier than she could've been played. The special effects are occasionally effective and there is some decent production design, but everything else, like the characters feels like a spoof of a parody of a glib popcorn flick.

Score: 2/10. Skip it.