In the movie Lockout it’s the future and the worst criminals are sent to space jail. When a riot breaks out, the CIA sends a criminal to the station to rescue the hostages. This movie is Escape from New York guys. Seriously, Escape from New York, in space!

I’m going to break this down from start to finish. If you don’t want to be spoiled on the movie (is that possible?) you should stop reading now.

The film starts out with Snow (Guy Pierce) getting interrogated because he killed a CIA agent. This scene is Pierce at his best. I am really hoping they make more movies with this character because he is the best part of this whole thing. We flash back to Snow getting a briefcase and a lighter from the dead CIA agent. The lighter must be important because we see it no less than 100 times throughout the film. The police in some kind of hover helicopter start chasing Snow who’s riding a motor unicycle (WAIT WHAT?). This chase scene might have been awesome, I can’t tell because it was too blurry to see what’s happening. Snow gets the the case to his friend Mace who stores it in a locker and then Snow is captured.

Meanwhile the president’s daughter Emilie Warnock (Maggie Grace) is visiting space jail to see how the prisoners are treated. It turns out the prisoners are not only in space but they are also cryogenically frozen. Ok sidebar, these prisoners are so dangerous they have to be taken to space AND frozen. Apparently the jail is using the prisoners to research cryogenics for deep space missions. The side effect is that people come out MORE aggressive and crazy. So the plan for this jail is to freeze the prisoners for 30 years, then they are released thinking no time has passed AND they are more violent. This is the worst idea. Anyway, one prisoner gets free, releases all the other prisoners and takes the dozen people running the station hostage. I have to admit I love the fact that the president’s daughter is a hostage. It’s like the movie recognizes that it shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

The CIA sends in Snake er… Snow to rescue the daughter so that the President can bomb the hell out of the rest of the station. Snow agrees to go because Mace is also on the station and Snow wants to know where the case is. (WHAT?? so Snow was captured first that night and while he was being interrogated, Mace was arrested, tried, sentenced and moved to space jail?). There is a scene where Snow is supposed to jump across this chasm and his support staff is like “there’s a gravity generator down below, you’ll just float over it”. Then the bad guys turn off the gravity generator and Snow falls down the chasm (whaaaa???). Snow finds Miss Warnock (a last name I don’t think actually exists), and Mace. Mace went crazy but Emilie figures out where the case was hidden based on his rambling. The space jail is slowly falling to earth and the President is going to blow it up. Snow and Emilie sneak through the ducts into the morgue, and the bad guys are there! hiding like it is a surprise party. How did the bad guys know they were going to come into that room?

The space jail is about to be destroyed so Snow and Emilie put on space suits and jump out of the station, then they fall! in space! Luckily these space suits can survive going through the atmosphere (did you know it only takes 2 seconds to travel through the Earth’s atmosphere? me either), and they also have parachutes for a safe landing to earth. Emilie finds the case and evidence Snow didn’t murder the CIA agent and they catch the real double agent. It turns out the data was never in the case. It was on a micro sd card in the lighter (remember that?).

I have to admit I didn’t hate this movie. It had a few good parts and I think with some tweaking it could have been a lot more fun. I saw it as part of work outing but I can’t really recommend seeing it in the theater. Just make it a rental. Let’s break it down:

Pros: - Guy Pierce is awesome, best character in the whole thing. - The whole premise of a riot on space jail is pretty good. - The presidents daughter as a hostage and sending in one guy are great over the top action movie cliches.

Cons: - PG-13, so the violence is practically non existent. They could have made the bad guys a lot more menacing with an R. Also the fights would have been better. - CG chase scene at the beginning was a blurry mess. - Fight scenes had the shaky knob turned up to 11.