Lockout

The president’s daughter has been captured by the inmates of the most dangerous prison imaginable and somebody has to go in there and get her out. The president doesn’t negotiate with terrorists etc and all the colours are predictably enough painted in.

Enter Guy Pierce as a former CIA operative who has to rescue the president’s daughter from said maximum-security prison which is spinning in space.

All in all, it works, and it entertainingly does what it says on the side of the space station…

Now, the similarities or deliberate borrowings by Luc Besson’s script on Escape From New York are painfully obvious here but when it comes to a cast that can’t be bought today, Lockout is still reasonably entertaining. Guy Pierce batters his way through a forest of drop-dead dialogue that was clearly meant for Bruce Willis and he commendably gives it both barrels.

Although somewhat lost in a film that feels like it has been deliberately sped-up to make it more exciting, he has to fend off twin Scottish accents of Vincent Regan and the manically talented Joseph Gilgun. Unsurprisingly people are shot and thrown into space and Fear The Walking Dead‘s Lenny James gets to hold the other end of Guy Pierce’s walkie-talkie. All in all, it works, and it entertainingly does what it says on the side of the space station. What it doesn’t do is escape the comparison John Carpenter’s Escape From New York.

Sounds too silly a homage? Well, give it a go and see if it still comes up smelling of airlocks.