Directors James Mather & Stephen St. Leger
Staring Guy Pearce, Maggie Grace and Peter Stormare
Rated MA
Score 3/6

A man wrongly convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage against the U.S. is offered his freedom if he can rescue the president’s daughter from an outer space prison taken over by violent inmates.

For those of you keeping score of when I revisit a given movie, I last reviewed Lockout in January of 2013. I suppose what prompted this revisit was stumbling across in the movies section on YouTube, it should be noted that some movies in this section (the free ones) come with ads every ten minutes, so it makes the actual movie watching experience like watching a movie on broadcast television or with a free account on Crackle. Now apparently, in October 2013, John Carpenter won a plagiarism case against Luc Besson over ‘Lockout’ proving clear similarities to Escape from New York (1981) and Escape from L.A. (1996). A French court ruled that enough similar distinctive elements from both Carpenter’s films were borrowed to merit a sanction. While watching this I also found that I was reminded of Fortress 2 (2000) and Demolition Man (1993) but that’s only because of the Prison in Space and suspended animation elements to the plot. I liked Lockout’s take on suspended animation, it seemed science factish considering that movie is set only 50 years into the future.
Lockout might not be a very rewatchable movie, but Guy Pearce gave a solid performance as Snow he was more then capable of playing a smartass anti-hero. Pearce and Maggie Grace had great on-screen chemistry with each other. It was also good to see that Grace’s character Emilie Warnock wasn’t the stereotypical damsel in distress type. The realization by Snow that Warnock was capable with a gun led to what I think was one of the biggest laughs of the movie. I thoroughly enjoyed Joe Gilgun who gave a performance that came across as a violent man-child who has trouble ignoring some of his more childlike urges.
Lockout Review