{"id":5241,"date":"2012-07-16T14:27:08","date_gmt":"2012-07-16T18:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=5241"},"modified":"2012-07-16T14:27:08","modified_gmt":"2012-07-16T18:27:08","slug":"br-lockout-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=5241","title":{"rendered":"BR: Lockout (2012)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Return to: <\/strong>Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>J to L<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Film: Good\/ BR Transfer: Excellent\/ BR Extras: Excellent<\/p>\n

Label: Alliance (Canada)\/ Region: A \/\u00a0Released: July 17, 2012<\/p>\n

Genre: Science-Fiction<\/p>\n

Synopsis: A disgraced government agent is the only man available to rescue the U.S. President’s daughter from an orbiting penal colony gone rogue.<\/p>\n

Special Features: (none)<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

As an executive producer, Luc Besson has developed a string of high concept stories with promising hooks that often fall far short of their goal to fully entertain, and Lockout<\/strong>, a blatant (yet wholly workable) riff on John Carpenter\u2019s Escape from New York<\/strong> (1982) set in Earth\u2019s orbit unfortunately isn\u2019t much different than Besson\u2019s prior efforts like District 13<\/strong> (2004).<\/p>\n

The problem with Besson lies in his decision to keep each film within a strange cartoon realm where Tex Avery, graphic novel grimness, and genre tropes are folded together without much attention towards character development and plot logic. In most cases, things jump ahead not for stylistic reasons or narrative efficiency, but a lack of interest and a need to get to the end fast.<\/p>\n

Basic plot: after being wrongly convicted of murdering a fellow government agent, Snow (buffed Guy Pearce) must rescue the U.S. President\u2019s daughter Emilie Warnock (Taken<\/strong>\u2019s Maggie Grace, finally looking like an adult) from an orbiting penal freezer before she\u2019s either killed by the reawakened prisoners or the structure\u2019s slow orbital decline towards Earth.<\/p>\n

After setting up the location, characters, and main conflicts between Snow, Emilie, and lead thugs Alex (Vincent Regan) and Hydell (scene stealer and seriously uglified Joseph Gilgun), the writers toss in a hastily rendered spaceship battle, and the film ends with massive plot holes in the final 10 minutes, including Snow & Emilie\u2019s preposterously fast freefall into Earth\u2019s orbit, and the kind of fast wrap-up Besson treats with perfunctory indifference.<\/p>\n

Most of Besson\u2019s Eurocorp\u00a0 films tend to revel in a grand opening sequence, kinetic action set-pieces, and cartoonish \/ absurdist repartee between his anti-heroes, and the latter is definitely Lockout<\/strong>\u2019s best element. Pearce delivers flat lines with a great dose of grimy contempt (particularly the opening interrogation scene that\u2019s all Daffy Duck, as Snow gets bashed in the head like a floor-mounted punching bag), and any tension is put on pause just long enough for a moment of pure ridiculousness. \u00a0(Quips Snow to Emilie before separating from his precious target, \u2018Here\u2019s an apple and here\u2019s a gun. Now go rescue yourself.\u2019).<\/p>\n

The hasty finale, though, manages to virtually kill most of the film\u2019s fun factor. There\u2019s no doubt the production was shot fast within a low budget: although the design of a motorcycle chase is a small homage to Tron<\/strong> (1982), the final execution is so scattershot, there was no need to include it in the film whatsoever; it would\u2019ve made more sense to have the unbreakable Snow take a train to the subway station to avoid cheating audiences with a poor highway chase.<\/p>\n

Writer-directors James Mather (who also functioned as cinematographer) and Stephen St. Leger had previously directed the slick short action film Prey Alone<\/a> <\/strong>(2004), in which an investigating government officer attempts to glean information from a prison suspect to catch an unidentified, ultra-violent felon. The filmmakers managed to extract a lot of production value using in-house effects, and there are stylistic similarities between the short and Lockout<\/strong>, including a flippant sense of humour in a prisoner interrogation scene, and the discovery of a secret code.<\/p>\n

In an ideal world, the Lockout <\/strong>BR would come with filmmaker commentary and Prey Alone<\/strong> so the filmmakers could describe their career paths from short film to feature debut under the wings of Besson, but the extras are sparse, if not non-existent, depending on which edition. Sony\u2019s U.S. \u2018unrated\u2019 disc features a pair of making-of featurettes (\u201cBreaking into Lockout\u201d + \u201cA Vision of the Future\u201d) whereas Alliance\u2019s Canadian disc is a bare bones edition, albeit larded with trailers.<\/p>\n

As it stands, Mather and St. Leger\u2019s space prison thriller is a mostly decent B-movie; audiences just have to bear with a hasty finale that\u2019s less the result of novice filmmakers, and more the responsibility of an executive producer who should\u2019ve ensured the final product was balanced in every<\/em> part.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2012 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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External References<\/em>:<\/p>\n

IMDB <\/a>— Film Website<\/a> — Composer Filmography<\/a><\/p>\n

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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> <\/em>\/\u00a0J to L<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to: Home \/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews \/ J to L . Film: Good\/ BR Transfer: Excellent\/ BR Extras: Excellent Label: Alliance (Canada)\/ Region: A \/\u00a0Released: July 17, 2012 Genre: Science-Fiction Synopsis: A disgraced government agent is the only man available to rescue the U.S. President’s daughter from an orbiting penal colony gone rogue. Special […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[1425,1426,1429,1427,1424,1430,1428],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-1mx","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5241"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5241"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5244,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5241\/revisions\/5244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}