DVD Of The Week: Lockout (2012)

A near future actioner revolving around sending a rough-round-the-edges anti-hero into an environment full of villains to rescue a VIP, Lockout is Escape From New York set on an experimental, orbiting penal colony.

Guy Pearce is Snow, a CIA agent framed and sentenced to 30 years on MS One (Maximum Security One), a prison floating 50 miles above the Earth, where the resident psychos are kept in suspended animation for the duration of the sentences.

Only during a pre-official opening visit by the President's daughter Emilie (Lost's Maggie Grace) something - of course - goes wrong and she, and her entourage, are taken hostage by the now very-much awake convicts, led by hard-man Alex (the familiar Vincent Regan) and his loony-toons brother Hydell (the brilliant Joseph Gilgun aka Rudy from Misfits).

The President's only hope of getting his daughter back alive is Snow...

The script, by directing team Stephen St. Leger and James Mather and executive producer Luc Besson, lurches from clever to corny, but is never dull.

Where it suffers is from a surfeit of ideas, it seriously tries to cram too much into its 90-minute duration (for instance, the sub-plot about prisoners being used in experiments investigating the effects of deep space exploration is a total waste of oxygen and dismissed, without any further reference, in about 10 seconds).

The plot is nothing new (the DVD cover even proclaims it "Die Hard in space", and there are definitely elements of the Bruce Willis classic here) and often stretches credibility - the freefall from space sequence is laugh-out-loud preposterous, while the hurried investigation of Snow's framing by Emilie is handled equally poorly - but Lockout wins over all its faults because, at heart, it's a good, old fashioned action adventure with the tried-and-tested wise-crackin' anti-hero rescuing the spunky maiden from the bad guys.

Pure popcorn fodder, this is not a film to lose too much sleep over trying to figure out its logistics. This is film to have on while you're kicking back, relaxing and unwinding.

Some people would call it clichéd and predictable, I'd call it "familiar". Familiar can be comforting on occasion. You know exactly what you're going to get with Lockout - no more, no less. And Guy Pearce is always good value for money.