Yet another cheesy sci-fi flick Luc Besson has dumped on his long but not especially impressive résumé, “Lockout” is a mangled action thriller mostly set on a space station that also serves as a prison.
Besson co-wrote and produced this cheesy mash-up of elements from James Bond and “Battlestar Galactica.” Directed by James Mather and Stephen St. Leger, it’s the kind of movie where someone tumbling in space above the earth’s atmosphere opens a parachute and lands gently on earth without even gasping for a breath.
Guy Pearce plays Snow, a rogue spy who issues sardonic one-liners while being beaten by dudes from the CIA who think he’s been giving away state secrets. (Actually, he’s been protecting them.) All of this is mixed up with a missing briefcase Snow was given by a dead fellow agent, whom he is wrongly accused of killing.
Snow is about to be sent to the space station/prison as an inmate, but instead he goes there as a rescuer after the inmates riot and take over the place. Their chief hostage is the president’s daughter (Maggie Grace), who is visiting on a fact-finding mission, but the rioters don’t know that.
The long episode in space, which features a few mild fights and shootouts, amounts to a long detour from the main plot, which manages to be both convoluted and dull at the same time. The chemically induced coma with which the bad guys threaten to punish our hero sounds more interesting than anything in this movie.