When I saw the trailer for Lockout (2012, directed by James Mather and Stephen St. Leger) the new action film from Luc Besson's genre factory, I knew that I had to see it. Oh, it looked awful, but it looked awful in that sweet spot of awful that's unreasonably entertaining, if you get my drift. I mean, you could see the entire movie in the trailer. It's essentially Escape From New York crossed with Fortress 2 and Die Hard, in which a single badass hero succeeds where an army would fail. Escape from New York IN SPACE? "Seriously," I said to sympathetic friends, how could this be bad?" (Note: the involvement of Luc Besson did give me pause along these lines). In truth, this is a movie that I would love to have seen with a gaggle of other people. I have at least a dozen friends who would groove on this movie and if I could have gathered them up in one place to watch it on the big screen, it would have been one of the sweeter movie going experiences I've had in a while. I had to settle for one friend, and a mostly empty theater, alas, but it was still fun.
I probably shouldn't say that Lockout is awful, because really, it's not. It's a specific kind of genre film and it executes the narrow range of its genre tropes about as well as any other action movie, and I look down on that at my peril. This is not a genre sector populated by movies that aspire to more than pure entertainment, so if you get more than that, count yourself lucky, and if you don't, well, that doesn't mean that the experience is bad. Entertainment is entertainment, right? If you want a message, as Sam Goldwyn once opined, send it Western Union. Anyway, when you compare this to other like movies, it stacks up pretty well. It has good production design, a compelling central character, a more than adequate stock of one-liners, and a willingness to dive headfirst into its own absurdity. I'll own up to the fact that this is a combo I find irresistible.