Lockout

Starring: Guy Pearce, Maggie Grace, & Vincent Regan

Rating: 2 1/2 out of 5 stars

Luc Besson is the Writer/Director of The Fifth Element and Taken. Usually when you sit down to watch one of his films, you're in for a treat. When he said he was making a new film that combined elements of both popular movies, I was excited, and then sorely disappointed. Lockout introduces us to a new kind of a prison, one that is in outer space, and holds it's prisoners in cryogenic stasis. The daughter of the U.S. President (Maggie Grace) was set to tour the facility, to make sure the prisoners are being treated fairly, when all hell breaks loose. Wanting to restore order with a minimal amount of casualties, the President sends in one man, his best C.I.A. operative, Snow (Guy Pearce), whose job it is to save the hostages. For starters this film is so full of cliques and references to other things that it almost becomes a farce of itself. Guy Pearce is the star and he was very good, however his character plays like John McClain in Outer Space. Snow is full of jokes and is this huge tough guy, who was almost a mirror image of Bruce Willis in Die Hard. The only thing missing was a catch phrase and lets all be thankful for that. Pearce is paired with Maggie Grace, who as in Taken, finds herself as a hostage once again. To her credit, she was a lot less whiny than in Taken and even fights back a little bit, but she basically played the same character that she always does. I don't know about you, but I have a hard time feeling sorry for a beautiful spoiled blonde girl who gets into trouble because she traveled to Europe or had to take on the cause of prisoners rights. Overall, there was a lot of action, but not much of a story to play on. Guy Pearce does a pretty good job, but Lockout is honestly a predictable, paper thin story, with special effects that aren't anything to write home about. It's another big budget film that tries to wow audiences with a unique setting and lots of explosions in the previews, but the only surprise here is that the usually reliable Luc Besson fails to deliver a worthwhile film.