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40Movies like this are supposed to be ridiculous on some level. It's part of the fun. But, dang. Falling through space, popping your parachute and landing on the one empty stretch of freeway in some bustling future city? C'mon. We all have our limits.
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67The space prison set-pieces get the job done; only in the film's terrestrial bookends does this nuts-and-bolts action film show its rust.
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75If you're an "Escape From New York" fan, you might have wondered about those rumors about a possible remake...Well, wonder no more. Producer Luc Besson's action factory has beaten everyone to it, stylishly. They're just calling the thing Lockout, and setting it in outer space.
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Apr 11, 201280Lockout isn't high art, but it's ridiculous fun.
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70It's clichéd, ridiculous, and very entertaining.
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63The idea of the president's daughter being held captive isn't blindingly original (it's an alarmingly dangerous occupation), but placing the story on a space station is a masterstroke, since we're about filled up to here with prison movies set on Earth.
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25The aftereffects of watching Lockout include an inability to focus or to complete a simple declarative sentence without an ill-timed cutaway in the middle.
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40It's just not quite as much fun as it should be, despite Pearce's best efforts and some good chemistry with Grace. Unusually for an action thriller, this could have benefited from being just a little longer.
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50With no thriller cliché left unused, the gaily outlandish plot is matched by tin-eared dialogue, ripe tough-guy overacting from the very game Pearce, and best-that-she-could acting from Grace.
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42Lockout consists of disciplined action pastiche, but much of its thundering engine borrows from better movies.
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40Mostly Lockout is lost in space.
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50Pearce gets into his groove swiftly, owns it and remains entertaining throughout. The rest of the movie, however, would work better as a video game.
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Apr 13, 201275Lockout is derivative and ridiculous and a good time, provided you can turn off higher brain functions along with any other part of you that might want to lodge a complaint about liberal borrowing from better movies.
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20Directors James Mather and Stephen St. Leger stage a few good action set pieces, but unlike the 1981 midnight movie classic it imitates, the blandly titled Lockout never busts out of its cheesy concept.
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60The pretty good thriller Lockout peaks with its first shot...When the camera moves and the plot kicks in - as it must - the movie loses its witty economy. Things get cluttered.
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12Besson co-wrote and produced this cheesy mash-up of elements from James Bond and "Battlestar Galactica."
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63Lockout is genre all the way. The film wears its colors proudly, but it also, alas, wears out its welcome.
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38Lockout is painful. Not painful in the way Uwe Boll or "Sex and the City" movies are painful. But painful enough that I kept waiting for Nicolas Cage to show up. Or Katherine Heigl. Or, god forbid, both.
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50Most of the time Lockout is pleasant enough, not something to recommend to a friend, but enjoyable in the moment. Guy Pearce has a lot to do with that, as the most impervious action star imaginable.
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63Luc Besson's producing career has been so geared toward lean, tough genre films that it's somewhat apt that he'd ape--or, if we're being kind, pay homage to--John Carpenter's preeminent sci-fi actioner Escape from New York with his latest, Lockout.
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75More than any masculine heroics, Pearce's primary job is maintaining the tone: smug, irreverent, and giddily punch-drunk.
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50Pearce pumps a surprising amount of levity into his one-liners – sure, it's still hot air, but at least the banter comes fully inflated.
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40Pearce has fun; world-weary in the style of a 15-year-old told one too many times to tidy his room – but shoddy special effects and the surface-level sass of the president's daughter leave this one spinning in low orbit.
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60Directors Stephen St. Leger and James Mather fill the film's obvious narrative gaps with enough witty banter and tongue-in-cheek humor for audiences to overlook the subpar special effects used throughout.
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60Lockout, is as dopey an entertainment as imaginable, but it's also a reminder that the film's star, Guy Pearce, has always had great screen magnetism, to which he has now added a bedrock of muscle. Also: he can act.
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50If you were to watch Lockout a few months from now, at home alone, it wouldn't produce more than a shrug. Movies this bad need to be revered in public places. Go see it in a mall, and try to sneak a beer or two in with you.
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80Lockout is the kind of manly nonsense no one wants to make anymore.
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Apr 19, 201240Luc Besson's clunky, space-bound actioner apes '80s B-flick excess but skimps on all the good parts. Fans of really bad science and pixelated CGI won't be disappointed, though.
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38A putrid film that comes dead-weighted with hammy one-liners and a plot so silly it borders on comedy?
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60Tackles a nifty futuristic premise with bargain-basement efficiency and a deadpan, devil-may-care attitude. It's an initially invigorating tactic that proves slapdash and unsatisfying over the long haul, reducing a potentially rich sci-fier to the level of a halfway decent time-killer
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40Lockout is, not unexpectedly, a potluck of derivative references.
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38Enjoy it, in moderation. It's your recommended weekly allowance of schlock.