A man wrongly convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage against the U.S. is offered his freedom if he can rescue the president's daughter from an outer space prison taken over by violent inmates.
The derivative screenplay only makes you remember the films being copied more fondly.
Shot in Serbia, with a mostly European supporting cast adopting American accents, it looks and sounds like what it is: reconstituted DVD fodder that’s wandered into cinemas by mistake.
Luc Besson’s clunky, space-bound actioner apes ’80s B-flick excess but skimps on all the good parts. Fans of really bad science and pixelated CGI won’t be disappointed, though.
Isn't a good movie but has a speedy slapstick nastiness.
Pearce’s impish disdain helps glue it together, but there’s another ace in the hole: it’s the fantastic Gilgun (This is England, Misfits), whose manic scuzziness as a scarred, tattooed, glass-eyed, and generally uncontrollable Glaswegian sex pest is hilariously repellent.
It’s just not quite as much fun as it should be, despite Pearce’s best efforts and some good chemistry with Grace. Unusually for an action thriller, this could have benefited from being just a little longer.
Even with the bonus of Pearce’s sardonic performance Lockout is still little more than a soulless, slapdash computer game.
Pearce has fun; world-weary in the style of a 15-year-old told one too many times to tidy his room – but shoddy special effects and the surface-level sass of the president's daughter leave this one spinning in low orbit.
The effects are generally impressive and the plot rattles along at a fair old crack...That said, Lockout isn’t anything like a must-see.
The most interesting feature of Besson's film is that the outer-space jailbirds are led by a Scot with a striking resemblance to George Galloway.
As bad sci-fi B-movies go, it's cheap enough to be inoffensive, but not quite silly enough to be lovable.
General release. Check local listings for show times.