Review of Lockout (2012) by Midlands M — 19 Oct 2013

Lockout had an awesome premise on the surface because it's a break and enter action film sort of like Escape from New York, only set in a science fiction setting of outer space.

But try as they might, directors James Mather and Stephen St. Leger fail to bring their story to life. They give a decent visual style to Lockout, but that just makes it all the more worse when the story they wrote with Luc Besson proves to be a failure.

The writing in Lockout is poor because for a film with a promising premise, the writing does nothing to emphasise the thrills of the situations the characters are stuck in, and so it never takes advantage of its high concept plot. And since the plot was the entire reason I watched Lockout, I was unhappy. The script doesn't deal any justice to the story either, or to Guy Pearce who deserves better.

The atmosphere is never enhanced to have the claustrophobic feel that it wanted to, and frankly its never convincing that the events are actually going on out in space.

The actors in Lockout are all uninspired with the exceptions of Guy Pearce and Maggie Grace, and they take the opportunity for a $20 million science fiction action thriller for granted regardless of the fact that it has such strong aesthetic qualities and decent visual effects. They assist bringing Lockout down to a B movie scale that it could have transcended.

And the action is decent but too small scale and looking too improvised, and you can see the cuts just before weapons go off and punches make contact which renders Lockout a new example of flawed editing in action cinema.

Lockout is just boring and that's the fatal flaw. I had a hint of that from the trailer but I hoped for more. That was too great a hope, unfortunately, and so Lockout just became a poor quality and forgettable film reminiscent of Escape from New York but not being fair in borrowing its ideas.

Guy Pearce proves he has the charisma to be an action hero in Lockout, because he has all the self-centred charisma and line swift line delivery in his character that one would require for an action film like this. He manages to make at least something in Lockout appealing.

Maggie grace isn't at her finest in Lockout, but she's superior to the standard set by practically the entire cast and supplies a genial presence and decent line delivery.

But aside from these two cast members and minor stylish elements, Lockout can boast nothing but a misleading trailer.