Lockout
Tagline: Take No Prisoners
Lockout follows a falsely convicted ex-government agent (Guy Pearce), whose one shot at gaining freedom comes if he’s willing to rescue the President’s daughter (Maggie Grace) from rioting convicts at an outer space maximum-security prison. Yes, this film is set in the near future.
And the script for Lockout (presumably from the near past) was co-written by one Luc Besson, who used to make interesting movies. This time around, his words are directed by the duo that is Stephen St. Leger and James Mather. But you kind of feared the worst even before reading The Village Voice’s damning critique: “The committee product of newbie directors James Mather, Stephen St. Leger, and producer Luc Besson, Lockout is, not unexpectedly, a potluck of derivative references.”
At least Time Out New York is kinder (albeit with its tongue firmly in its reviewing cheek), asking “where else are you going to find terse, Hawksian flirtation and — that perennial chestnut — a foreign-accented baddie”? But Variety takes no prisoners, concluding that “the tension goes slack even as the pacing remains relentless, and the climactic unraveling of story threads is the result of fairly desultory detective work.”
LIST: TIME’s Top 10 Films of 2011
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