There’s more than a whiff of John Carpenter’s Escape from New York and Escape from L.A. in Stephen Saint Leger and James Mather’s Lockout. With a daring, near-impossible escape scenario and two attractive and caustically bantering leading players heading the charge, the movie has a fair share of thrills and spills, but there’s nothing here that’s new, and apart from seeing one of the screen’s most appealing leading men all bulked up and taking no prisoners, Lockout may be just too by-the-numbers for its own good.
Lockout (Blu-ray)
Directed by Stephen Saint Leger, James Mather
Studio: Sony
Year: 2012
Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1 1080p AVC codec
Running Time: 95 minutes
Rating: NR
Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 English, Italian, Portuguese; Dolby Digital 5.1 Spanish
Subtitles: English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese
Region: A-B
MSRP: $ 35.99
Release Date: July 17, 2012
Review Date: July 14, 2012
The Film
3/5
When Emilie Warnock (Maggie Grace), daughter of the U.S. President, is taken hostage by escaped convicts during an inspection of the M.S. One space station prison facility in 2079, the U.S. security chief Langral (Peter Stormare) appoints ex-CIA agent now newly sentenced prisoner Snow (Guy Pearce) to rescue the first daughter before the government blows the space station out of the sky. At first, the prisoners led by Alex (Vincent Regan) and his psychotic brother Hydell (Joseph Gilgun) don’t know who they’ve got to use as a bargaining chip, but once they learn of her identity, the hunt is on to get her and make their demands to the President known.
Instead of a laconic badass like Kurt Russell’s Snake Plissken leading the charge to reclaim the girl, the script by co-directors Mather and Leger along with producer Luc Besson gives us an eternally quipping cynic taken straight out of the Die Hard films. The one-liners are entertaining, but they often get in the way of maximizing the dangerous predicament the protagonists find themselves in. The script is rife with countdowns (three seconds before a hostage is shot, eight hours before the station crashes to Earth, thirty seconds before reviving someone will be impossible, one minute before a bomb explodes) with a definite lack of tension-building despite their best efforts, and there is just too much overly familiar about the characters and subplots the film has going (a psychotic brother? a crooked official who framed Snow? the obvious attraction the two leads have for one another despite all the hectoring and wisecracks?) There’s a definite B-movie sensibility about the film despite its decent special effects and a cast of fine actors. First time directors Mather and Leger make sure there’s a great deal of action and noise, but it’s often just a mess with the climactic space raid on the prison filled with explosions but not much tension and an early chase on a space cycle looking like it came right out of a Star Wars movie or even from producer Luc Besson’s own The Fifth Element.
Guy Pearce has definitely been spending a great deal of time in the gym. Always lean and fit, he now sports a physique to rival the screen’s most muscle-bound superheroes. And his solid American accent and easy way with a line make his performance pure pleasure even if all his one-liners do damage to the film’s attempts to crank up the suspense. Maggie Grace matches Pearce quip-for-quip and does a decent job with her sorrow over the loss of friends in the raid, but as the (mostly) victim, she has little to play but fear and confusion until near the end of the film. Vincent Regan offers a strong, stoic showing as the head convict bent on having his way, but Joseph Gilgun practically eats the camera as the lunatic Hydell, a performance so over-the-top as to be more hilarious than horrific. Peter Stormare tries to keep things under control on Earth with a possibly too low key performance while Lennie James as Snow’s loyal friend in the CIA makes an amiable counterpoint to Stormare’s inexpressiveness and Pearce’s constant stream of retorts.
Video Quality
4.5/5
The film’s theatrical aspect ratio of 2.40:1 is faithfully rendered in a 1080p transfer using the AVC codec. Sharpness is mostly excellent throughout the film though cinematographer/co-director James Mather has infused the image with an aquamarine tint that sometimes obstructs shadow detail in the darkest areas of the elaborate sets. The tint also gives a purplish tinge to flesh tones, understandable under the circumstances. Otherwise, color saturation has been dialed down in the timing also giving the film a bleakness of look and tone. The movie has been divided into 16 chapters.
Audio Quality
5/5
The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 sound mix is exactly what one would expect from an action-oriented science fiction adventure film. The surround channels are alive with activity almost from the first and rarely take a quiet break through the film’s 95 minutes. Dialogue has been expertly recorded and has been placed in the center channel. The LFE channel offers an excellent workout for the subwoofer. Alexandre Azaria’s music is loud but not particularly memorable. However, it’s been given a first rate encode through the entire soundstage.
Special Features
2/5
Both bonus features are presented in 1080p.
“Breaking into Lockout” features co-director Stephen Saint Leger and stars Maggie Grace and Guy Pearce talking about making the film. Emphasis is placed on the variety of characters in the script, the dry humor that has been woven though the movie to never let itself be taken too seriously, and special mention of the cycle chase and other use of green screen in the film. It runs 11 ¼ minutes.
“A Vision of the Future” features art directors Frank Walsh and Oliver Hodge along with visual effects coordinator Richard Bain discussing the main prison set and where the weird accoutrements that line the walls and corridors came from. This runs 10 ¼ minutes.
The disc contains promo trailers for Looper, The Raid Redemption, Safety Not Guaranteed, Robot & Frank, and Starship Troopers: Invasion.
In Conclusion
3/5 (not an average)
There is fun to be had with the sci-fi action thriller Lockout, but don’t expect anything fresh or new about the story or characters. The Blu-ray release looks and sounds near-reference in quality and should provide a lively rental for those interested in this kind of action film.
Matt Hough
Charlotte, NC