Movie Title: Lockout
Directors: James Mather, Stephen St. Leger
Date Released: April 13th, 2012
Date Seen: August 23rd, 2013
Part 1 – Spoiler Free Quickie Review
Scene – Earth 2074. We are slightly more advanced to the point that we keep the president in an underground version of the oval office. We also are testing out a system that keeps prisoners in a deep sleep in a maximum security prison in space. Currently, it is a joint venture with multiple countries housing extremely dangerous prisoners. The presidents daughter, Emilie (Maggie Grace) is going up to the prison to see if the deep frozen space the inmates are in causes any kind of dementia or lasting effects on the prisoners. At the same time, former agent Snow (Guy Pearce) is wrongly accused of a crime. When things go bad on MS1, the space prison, he is given a chance to save Emilie in exchange for his freedom.
The movie was pretty laughable. It has beautifully choreographed fight scenes – as in they are so beautifully choreographed, it sometimes look like a professional dancer was performing the fights. In the very first scene for example, one guy gets kicked and “falls onto a bed into a wall” but it’s really a perfect back-flip across the bed and barely touching the wall. All the fight scenes were just that too pretty and perfect. The CGI in the movie is also hysterically bad. There are a couple of scenes (on involving a motorcycle) that are just so bad, a freshman in animation school probably could have done better. The scenes in space aren’t as bad as that, because it is all CGI so there is nothing real keeping you from seeing how truly bad it is.
There are also some awkward but craptastically cheesy jokes, at random times. A couple of well placed jokes in an action film are nice, but when they are just so cheesy, every single time, it’s not enjoyable. The plot also has a number of things that require you to suspend belief. A lot. As in the fact that we have a space prison with a gravity generator is the easiest thing to believe. By far the easiest. There are a lot of things that just go SO perfectly for the plot to happen that it gets annoying. Maybe turn this movie on as a background watch, but definitely don’t seek it out to watch.
Part 2 – In Depth Spoiler Ridden Review/Synopsis
There’s a good plot synopsis here.
Some thoughts I had about the movie are below. Like the stuff about the suspension of belief and plot holes.
Almost instantaneously the inmates are 1. awake, 2. in an organized mob taking over the ship, working as a team despite the fact they are all from different countries and 3. following an older inmate as their “leader” who also happened to be the last one to wake up. What’s the probability of that? Non-existent. But, you know, it is probably the most probable thing in this movie…. so, there’s that… Another highly unbelievable part is that the inmates, who have been just chilling in another room, suddenly realize that Snow and Emilie have killed their two leaders and start to chase them – um no. And another – how is Mace the ONLY one we see with dementia? Did they just lock the other people up some where? Just seemed odd that he is the only one we see that has dementia, and of course he’s the one person we need to not have it.
The jokes I found unnecessary were like the awkward falling through the ceiling part, where Emilie lands with her face on Snow’s dick and he makes a “a simple thank you would be enough” joke. One joke that I liked, but was just out of place was when Snow hands Emilie a gun, and she shoots the crap out of some guys. And he makes a joke “Jesus, I thought you were a democrat.”
Emilie is also an idiot, obviously. She keeps listening to Snow, asking him for advice, and the one time he gives her the BEST advice (don’t tell Hydell where you are) she doesn’t listen to him. Dumbo. She had good intentions, but still, when you have someone who clearly knows 10,000 times more about the situation you’re in than you do, listen to him. Please. Also though, Hydell was completely insane, so he would be super unpredictable no matter what you did. I do love him and Alex interacting though. Poor Alex is letting him be crazy, because it’s his brother, but once Hydell kills the hostages, Alex goes doesn’t like that, and punches him. Not surprised that soon after Hydell kills Alex. But Alex, still feeling sorry for his brother only can think “Whose going to look after you now?”. I just love them two. Super interesting family relationship.
Overall: 4.5/10
Suspension of believe must be really high, and if you actually pay attention the movie will annoy the crap out of you.