Lockout

I'm getting beat up by a guy named Rupert?

Luc Besson wrote it so you’re in right? RIGHT? It’ll be like Fifth Element but with more cheese and bigger guns! Well Guy Pearce’s arms at least.
Reading about the film I was sold by Besson alone. But then I heard it was to be an unashamedly 80s throwback and I giggled like a schoolgirl. The question of course is did it deliver? It was meant to be a film without any pretenses; a cool sci-fi with some awesome action sequences and sharp one-liners. Unfortunately it lacked any real explosive power and I was left wanting more.

Scene

Set in the near-future (obviously) Lockout follows a falsely convicted ex-government agent who is given the chance of freedom. All he has to do is break into a maximum security prison where the prisoners have escaped and rescue the president’s daughter. Oh, and the prison is in space.

Take

If you’re looking for an intelligent, tense and powerful sci-fi wait for Prometheus, because Lockout ain’t it. You really need to find out a bit about the film before you go and see it, hence why I’ve stuck the first five minutes below. I went in with low expectations, with the main attraction being a dry script with plenty of humorous quips. And, to be fair, it didn’t disappoint on that front.

The disappointment lay in the lack of tension, the poor CGI and the predictability of the screenplay. The 'futuristic' motorbike chase in the beginning of the film is a joke, like someone made it on their home PC and the production team copied and pasted it from youtube. The script genuinely saves the day. That and Guy Pearce's delivery of it. It is proof that post-Die Hard one-liners can still be credible, if only as deadpan sarcasm.


Whilst Guy Pearce's performance was sterling, for it was Joseph Gilgun's role that stole the show (see above). You'll know him This is England (all of them), he played Woody, but you wouldn't recognise him in Lockout. He plays a crazy-ass Scottish lunatic who is always fucking up, with hilarious consequences. I really hope to see him in more stuff.

Director

The Directors, James Mather and Stephen St. Leger, who also co-wrote, can hardly claim to be masters of the craft but there weren't any glaring errors. Of course the CGI was shit, there was a lack of urgency in moving the narrative along and there was a lack of inventiveness in the editing for a sci-fi, but let's not focus on the negatives you know? The few fight scenes were reasonably sleek and there was palpable chemistry between Guy Pearce and Maggie Grace so let's leave it at that.

And... Cut.

Well they say Love is blind, and it couldn't be truer than my perception of Lockout. It was slammed by the critics and arguably they're right. But I love Luc Besson, the script was cool and the film was buoyed by some strong performances. I didn't mention Maggie Grace (Taken) who was smoking as ever. 
[Whilst writing this I have just discovered that Luc Besson is working on Taken 2 and now I’ve become distracted.]
So whilst it was disappointing in places, and it's certainly not Besson's finest work, it's definitely worth watching. But it's not worth wasting £8 at the cinema, that'll just make the bad CGI bigger.