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Snake Plissken is back.
Whoops. I mean, a super-spy go-to-government stud named Snow (Guy Pearce, playing Kurt Russell, adorned in a ‘Warning: Offensive’ t-shirt) is back on the job in co-directors Stephen St. Leger & James Mather’s Lockout. It’s cheesy brawn over brains for this one. Lockout knows exactly what it is and it never weakens in its grip upon the Roger Corman reigns. Even its budget rings in its limitations with great fun. Pushing its low-budget sci-fi offerings, shameless rip-offs, and B-movie swagger to the limit, the good times are as infectious as its raucous cast.
Co-written by Luc Besson, the wise-cracking Snow maneuvers his way through a Die Hard scenario in a prison floating somewhere in space. Leger and Mather and Besson are credited as screenwriters, but the script - which borrows so much from every other thundering actioneer – practically writes itself. Throw in a jailhouse insurrection led by a hot head (Joseph Gilgun) and a cool as a cucumber-type (Vincent Reagan), a kidnapped President’s daughter (Maggie Grace), and a falsely accused anti-hero (Pearce), who plays by his own Han Solo-inspired rules, and you know exactly what to expect.
Lockout plays its B-movie board game theatrics well. The pieces are plastic and they simply wait for the next player’s turn. It’s so campy and comical at times that it is hard to be critical of the final product. One can choose to ding the film for a couple of shoddy effect sequences, but that's all part of its charm. Lockout isn’t aiming to be inventive; it’s a return to the action genre of the early 1990’s and, while there’s a lot of sucktastic films from that era, this one manages to be the cream of the crop with a healthy amount of humor and goofy galactic fun.
What works best is the cast; everyone – especially Pearce – has come to party. Pearce no longer looks like a reserved Richard Chamberlin (see Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark). He’s pumped and his steely streamlining lands every punch thrown. Of course, that workout includes his comedic timing. The comedy; the outer space setting; the Indiana Jones heroics all work to deliver something that is certainly worthy of a buck or two.
Certainly, Lockout isn’t aiming to be inventive with a worn-out genre. There’s no mistaking its intentions. Sit back and enjoy, my friends. With hammers cocked, its geeky phasers are set on “fun” and, with a budget of only a mere $30 million, the global box office returns should promise that Snow is here to stay.
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, and language including some sexual references.
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