Mini Review - Lockout

So, after some goodish movies, some terrible movies and some head scratching movies, how about we round off with a dreadfully boring movie.

Too bad, this is Lockout

Released in 2012, this French movie made $32.2m on its $20m budget which in movie terms means it didn't make money after movie costs and paying off the people who they ripped off. There was a lawsuit about them ripping off Escape from New York. I haven’t seen it so I can’t say but I don’t care.

The plot goeth thusly. CIA agent Snow is convicted of a murder he did not commit (gee, that’s not the plotline of literally everything ever) but is offered a chance at freedom when the prisoners take over the space-prison MS-One and take hostages, including the President’s daughter, who was on a diplomatic mission there at the time because of course she was.

Keen to prevent a strike which would ultimately kill his daughter, and when other tactics begin to fail, the president asks Snow to conduct a rescue, or her specifically. What happens is… actually pretty predictable from there so…

So, let’s take a look at the heroes. Snow is a d*ck, that’s his character. The President’s daughter is a b*tch, that’s her character. The President is weak and only cares about his daughter. The ops manager is secretly a villain, and that’s his character.

OK, so not much to go with there, how about the villains then? Well we have the leader of the revolution… who’s smart, and that’s his character. His brother is kinda insane, but not enough to be interesting, and that’s his character and as for the rest, there’s erm… and erm… yeah, the rest are all cannon fodder.

What about the hostages, then? Maybe they’re interesting, right? Wrong, almost none of them are. There was some subplot about them abusing and experimenting on prisoners but it got lost in the sea of nothing that is this movie. That and all of them die and none of them have to confront this fact.

So, you have no reason to care about any character in the entire movie. Maybe some onscreen chemistry between our leads? Nope, these two trade insults at each other, get p*ssed off at each other and are generally boring and slightly irritating together.

The worst kind of movies to review aren’t necessarily the terrible ones, but the boring ones. And because I know nothing about these characters, I have no reason to care about what happens to them, which then robs the movie of any tension it could’ve had.

So what can I say, this movie is so…

The setup is decent but you need to let us know the characters before going into something like this. The effects and sets look alright, it’s not budget that’s the problem surprisingly, it’s the script needing a couple more drafts to add more character to it. It’s far from the worst thing I’ve ever watched, but I don’t think I’ll remember the plot by tomorrow.

Rating 40/100

For initial thoughts on movies, comics and video games as well as exclusive updates, click here to like my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter @rageformedia

Images/clips used in this review are from Lockout, Futurama and Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time and belong to their respective owners. All images in this review are subject to fair use