Big Picture Big Sound

Space Off

In this day and age, science fiction on a tight budget is a tricky business. Thanks in large part to the likes of James Cameron, Ridley Scott, and the Internet, audiences don't bring a suspension of disbelief to the theater anymore. Not only do the special-effects need to be seamless but the sets need to be based on plausible mechanics and the environments need to be fully-realized. It's not enough to put a bunch of colored lights on the wall and call it a starship bridge - the filmmaker needs every button to have a purpose and every blinking light to signal a specific dire emergency.

Or there is the other direction: the 'small' science-fiction film, which foregoes spaceships in favor of near-future landscapes, and makes up for world-spanning adventure with carefully crafted characters and deep philosophical explorations, as was so well done in "Never Let Me Go" and "The Adjustment Bureau".

Sadly, "Lockout" brings little of either to the table. The plot has wrongly-convicted Agent Snow (Guy Pearce, "The King's Speech") attempting to single-handedly rescue the President's daughter (Maggie Grace, "Taken"), who has been (yes) taken hostage in a super-max space prison. Luc Besson, master of the quirky attribution, takes a script credit for "original idea" (which must have John Carpenter eating his hat) and also shares screenplay credit with newcomers Stephen St. Leger and James Mather, both of whom also directed.

The single biggest failing is that there is absolutely no sense of danger, urgency, or investment in any of the characters. The actors do little more than go through the motions, but then again the script offers them few options. Mr. Pearce throws around cocky one-liners like Bruce Willis at an evil genius convention, and Ms. Grace hits all the required marks as the underestimated spoiled rich girl, but their admittedly enjoyable byplay is all script has to offer. There's no plausible ticking-clock and the ending is never in doubt - except for the fact that it completely defies everything that every schoolchild knows about suborbital re-entry.

The effects, meanwhile, are laughable. The early motorcycle chase is very animated, and not in the good way. It actually looks animated. Not CGI - old school cartoon and the scales and proportions vary faster than Rubeus Hagrid's. None of this is helped by the remarkably choppy editing, which highlights rather than conceals the chasm between the film's aspirations and its budget.

Put in a 1970s context (when we called it "Outland") "Lockout" is an enjoyable-enough movie, but by today's standards it evokes outer space only by feeling cold, empty, and endless.