The best science fiction and fantasy films create a cohesive universe for audiences, so that no matter how outlandish the events of a given world may be, they make sense according to the logic of that world. The best action movies are peopled with characters that audiences can relate to and care about, so we want to root for (or against) them when the stakes are life and death. LOCKOUT, a sci-fi-action disaster of a film, accomplishes neither of these feats. The result is a movie so uneven that it is near impossible to know what to make of it.

 

Based an on an idea by Luc Besson (The Professional, The Fifth Element), the premise of LOCKOUT isn’t especially novel, but it could have made for a fun popcorn flick. Guy Pearce stars as Snow, a man wrongly convicted of espionage against the United States. When a humanitarian mission to a space prison goes awry and the President’s daughter (Maggie Grace) is held hostage by violent criminals, Snow is offered his freedom if he can bring her back alive. There’s a secondary plot involving the incident that prompted Snow’s arrest and a lost briefcase, but the details we’re finally given in the last ten minutes of the film are sketchy at best – I suspect the filmmakers were planning to delve into that little mystery in the no doubt hoped-for sequel – and are only really important to the film in that they’ve got Snow gunning for justice.

 

LOCKOUT’s screenplay, written by Stephen St. Leger, James Mather & Luc Besson, could pass for a Mad Lib of a 1980s action flick. One can easily imagine Snow being played by Bruce Willis circa Die Hard; the character is a sexy rogue, a chauvinist with a heart of gold. In the heyday of traditional action movies, it was somehow easier to take seriously a leading man who mumbled “It was coupon night and I was trampolining your wife,” during a violent interrogation than it is today, where dialogue of this sort comes off as parodic. Guy Pearce, who is really a much better actor than LOCKOUT allows him to be, throws all he’s got at Snow, even if he doesn’t always appear to be in the same film as those around him. Though his work can’t elevate LOCKOUT from the gutter, Pearce is charming enough to make Snow bearable in a film that is often hard to take seriously. The same can’t be said for Maggie Grace, who is little more than set dressing and whose performance as the first daughter does nothing to make her stand out.

 

Pearce’s light-hearted performance as Snow, combined with the resolutely sober tone of the rest of the film, is just one source of discord in LOCKOUT. Absurdities abound, from Scottish supervillain brothers to characters parachuting to earth from outer space. Every five minutes or so, three chords of hyper-dramatic score play at full volume, regardless of the narrative relevance of such. Kills – of which there are many – are often played for laughs, though the authorities monitoring the situation on Earth repeatedly note the seriousness of the hostage situation. In short: LOCKOUT is a mess. An often funny mess, but a mess nonetheless.

 

LOCKOUT is either a laughably bad straight-up action movie, or the worst attempt at post-modern parodic genre blending that this moviegoer has ever seen. I’d like to give the filmmakers credit for striving for the latter, but outside the quippy dialogue, the movie takes itself so seriously that it’s hard to believe it’s an attempt to poke fun at anything other than the intellect of its audience. Thankfully for those who bankrolled the film, at the screening I saw, audience members seemed to be willing to laugh at LOCKOUT for its unintentionally comedic moments, which suggests the film will have a healthy box office take.  I won’t suggest you avoid this film, but know what you’re in for before you choose it over Cabin In The Woods this weekend.