Sunday, April 15, 2012

Lockout




Runtime: 95 minutes

Directed by: James Mather, Stephen St. Leger

Starring: Guy Pearce, Maggie Grace, Vincent Regan, Joseph Gilgun

From: Europa Corp.

My apologies for this getting up late, but things happened.

Here is the movie I saw on Friday afternoon before I watched The Raid: Redemption. Thank the heavens I did not see this second, as it almost would have ruined the afternoon for me. In recent months I heard more and more about the movie and it sound interesting, even if it sounds like a real ripoff of Escape From New York. I should note that I've seen both Escape films before; Escape From L.A was pretty lame and pretty much was exactly like the first, only not good at all. The first, though, is really cool. It's not technically the best but it has a LOT of style and just the cool factor. That and the quality cast makes it a great time despite its faults. It still sucks we'll never get a third Snake Plissken film, and this movie is a laughable attempt at a Snake Plissken film Guy Pearce as Snow is no Snake.

The plot is set in 2079 and basically, the President's daughter (Grace) is at a space prison to see if everyone up there is treated humanely. The fit hits the shan and the prisoners escape their cells and she's taken hostage. Snow ends up getting wrongly arrested (through circumstances not worth discussing) and he has to go on a one man mission to rescue her. He was selected because... well, just because. As you can see, the story is not good at all, at least in my opinion.

Oh, this movie... a big problem is that most other places got the movie in what would be considered an R-rating here in the United States. Of course, they wanted it to be PG-13 here so it was edited to be that and thus a lot of the action gets ruined so you don't see headshots or what have you. Problem is, even if this was rated R, I wouldn't have liked it. As I mentioned already the story is just not there. There's no tension to anything and you really don't care what happens to anyone. Hardly any of it is engaging at all. Some moments are fine but otherwise, no. Stuff happens and that's it. Only a small amount of the one-liners are actually funny.

I knew there was trouble when you had the opening action scene and it featured some HORRIBLE special effects. I mean, it was almost as bad as what you saw in Escape From L.A., no kidding. It was so atrocious I at first thought it was done that way on purpose... then I couldn't figure out WHY you would do such a thing. No exaggeration on my part. And the final 15 minutes or so are quite incoherent at times. When I was confused for a part of the climax because it was done so poorly, that's a problem.

If you must see this, wait until DVD where you'll get an unrated version that is what most of the rest of the world saw. Also, you'll be able to use subtitles, which will come in handy. I swear that one villain's accent is so heavy I could maybe understand 20% of what he said, and nothing more. What a disappointment this was.

I'll be back Monday night.

No comments:

Post a Comment