Snow (Guy Pearce) is a governmental agent, accused of killing another governmental operative and stealing information from him. He actually tried to save that information and passed them on to his partner Mace (Tim Plester). Each one tries to get away on their own, but soon they both are arrested. After futile attempts to squeeze the information from Snow, he’s convicted to 30 years in stasis on MS: One, a maximum security prison in Earth’s lower orbit. Meanwhile, Emilie Warnock (Maggie Grace), the daughter of the president of the United States of America, is paying a visit to MS One. She’s concerned that the stasis is causing mental illness to the prisoners. But the interview with Hydell (Joseph Gilgun), a rapist and murder, goes horribly wrong, leading to a prison-wide breakout. Among the fugitives is Alex (Vincent Regan), who takes on the lead and starts to blackmail the government, threatening to kill the hostages, not knowing who Emilie is. The government on the other hand, knows. That rules out military action, leaving only one plan: To send one man in, to try to rescue her. But who is qualified for this, while also being valiant and/or stupid enough? Snow is. And with the promise to find his partner Mace on MS: One, and with him a lead to the lost information, he’s even willing to do this.

The movie starts out as a spy thriller, at least looks like it, but soon turns into a mixture of Escape from New York and Die Hard in space. The story is about as deep and predictable, but this ain’t the kind of movie you watch for the story. Instead, you watch it for some fun and action. And this is what you get. While the action in the beginning (spy thriller part) is the best of the movie, you can enjoy some shootings and explosions later. The characters on the other hand are very swallow; especially the main protagonist is very one-sided. He’s making up for his lack of emotion with funny comebacks and one-liners, though. And by that I mean about every single line he had in his script. But it’s okay; it’s not turning the movie into a comedy, but still adds a good part of fun to it, just gets a bit annoying every once in a while. I should also mention that this is a Luc Besson movie, which means that it’s quite good for what it is. But a thing that really bugged me was the pace. Things often go fast from one thing to the next, so you get the feeling things are left out or the movie could’ve at least been better with a few more minutes spread over the entire flick, just to slow it down a bit here and there. This is also one of the reasons they actually blow the only semi-deep moment that tries to carry a message. Maybe you have to wait for the Directors Cut to get this. Which brings me to the conclusion: If you like to see a good action flick on the big screen, go for it, it’s really enjoyable. If you just add flicks like that to your time killer list, wait for the DVD and hope there’s a Director’s Cut version of it.

Links: IMDB: Lockout, IMDB: This Review