Movie Review: LOCKOUT (2012) – Sarcasm At Its Finest

I love Guy Pearce. I’ve loved all of his performances from MEMENTO to TIME MACHINE. So I’ll watch basically whatever he does. So I watched LOCKOUT. This preceding was an unnecessary look into the reasoning with which this reviewer watches movies.

Rating: 

3 Out Of 5

LOCKOUT features Pearce with Maggie Grace from TAKEN, who gets made a hostage… yet again. I smell typecast! Anyways… Grace is the President’s daughter in some weird future world, who’s visiting a brand new prison in outer space where prisoners are put into stasis. During her visit, because her Bodyguard didn’t give up all his guns, a convict escapes, fucks everyone up and releases all 500 prisoners.

Enter Guy Pearce, a government agent who’s been accused of treason and will be jailed. When the shit storm happens on the prison, he’s nominated to go rescue the President’s daughter and at the same time track down a lead to proving his innocence, who also happens to be in this space-prison.

It’s a simple and straightforward premise that has a lot of plot holes, logic errors and just over all stupidity that doesn’t make sense. But none of it matters. Why? GUY motherfuckin’ PEARCE motherfuckers! That’s why!!

Pearce is awesome in LOCKOUT. This is one of his best performances to date. He plays a guy that is dry, witty, constantly sarcastic and a bitch of a man who is obnoxious as hell! And he does this brilliantly. It’s almost as if Pearce knows that this movie isn’t perfect, but doesn’t give a shit, and just tries to have fun with his role. It’s Pearce unleashed!

Pearce’s performance in this role almost makes me wonder how much if it was written for him, and how much was his own input, as none of the rest of the characters are as well developed, neither is the story. Or anything else.

The plot follows a predictable sequence of events, with some cool action, and predictable ending. It’s a typical action movie, but not done well. The chemistry between Grace & Pearce is non-existent. Despite being in amazing shape and not looking his age, Pearce and Grace still look like they have a generation gap, and the ‘romantic tension’ almost seems forced near the end.

The story is kind of unique, and is done somewhat well, but not nearly well enough to be ‘good’. Again, the only reason to watch LOCKOUT is Guy Pearce and his personal brand of awesome-ness in a character who stands out more so than the entire movie, the entire time. Every scene without Pearce is a gut-wrenching wait for him to come on screen.

LOCKOUT is pure action fluff, with decent gimmicky plot, and mediocre execution and sub par performances, with the exception of Guy Pearce, who allows this to be watchable and enjoyable for the same reasons.

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