This next review comes not from the mouth of me but from Shawn Francis, a U.S based film reviewer and Horror writer. He's kindly sent over his review for Lockout and takes a look at the U.S dvd's release. Unfortunately here in the U.K we have to wait until September for the film but it's a good look at what we can expect on these shores...
Snow
counters every question with a smart-ass remark, and with every
smart-ass remark he gives another, bigger, CIA operative gives him a
very painful, knuckle sandwich. Then again when isn’t a
punch in the face painful? A flashback to that room gives us our
first action sequence where we see our hero has been set up and a
good friend has gotten killed. The hand-to-hand combat spills out
onto the street where the cops in their futuristic, flying cruisers
give chase once Snow commandeers an equally futuristic cycle. This
entire chase is CGI, as you will see in one of the two featurettes
included; the cycle, Pierce and the briefcase he’s carrying are the
only real elements in that scene.
Not a bad beginning
in my book, I even thought the CGI “car chase” was nicely
rendered. Even though it was amped up to an almost hyper-realistic
pace, I wasn’t bothered by it one bit. For those who have seen the
trailer and are also fans of director, John Carpenter, you will
quickly note the blatant similarities to that director’s two Snake
Plisskan movies. The most obvious being the general plot of Snow
having to infiltrate a prison, in this case, it’s one that’s been
built in space, to rescue the President’s daughter, Emilie Warnock
(Maggie Grace).
There
are two other “homages” to those films, specifically, to
Plisskan’s first go around in New York City. For those that have
the ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK special edition DVD, there’s a cut
scene included of Plisskan being nabbed on a subway after he and his
buddies robbed a bank, which was supposed to explain how he was
captured. As you know, that first flick opens up with Plisskan
already in the hands of the authorities. After Snow’s car chase in
the beginning, he’s eventually nabbed in a subway. The other
“homage” is the electronic map device strapped to Snow’s wrist.
Plisskan sported a similar device when he went into New York; except
his was basically a glorified watch that counted down the time he had
left to get the President out.
Oh,
wait, there is one more homage, like Plisskan, who had to be forced
into saving the President, Snow, too, is forced into his mission to
save the President’s daughter. His motivation is his contact, the
one he threw this mysterious briefcase to before he was caught, who
was also caught later, and sent to the very prison Emilie is being
held captive on. Snow needs to find out what happened to that
briefcase for its very contents could help exonerate him.
As I
watched the movie, and seeing these “homages,” I couldn’t help
but view Snow as some kind of older, wittier, wise-ass brother to
Plisskan. There are some nice character twists, which, thankfully,
the trailer did not give away. It’s one of those movies where
certain douche-bags aren’t as douchy as first thought, and a
certain good guy is infinitely more douchy than you would have
ever thought.
Another
nice touch was that the prison takeover was not some huge conspiracy
to take the daughter hostage, it was a simply a crime of opportunity,
a bad judgment call by one of the security agents accompanying Emilie
who sets the whole thing unintentionally in motion.
The
two main bad guys are brothers, one is more psychopathic than the
other, and it’s this unstable one that just manages to fuck
everything up for big bro time and time again. Both are interesting
to watch.
I
had full intention to see this in the movie theater, but, then, I
finally saw a commercial of it on TV and found out they had rated it
PG-13. I said to myself, ‘nope, ain’t happening.’ Hoping,
however, it would get some kind of R-rated, or Unrated, DVD release.
Well, thankfully, it did get that Unrated release, but after having
seen it, I get the feeling this movie was conceived from the start to
be PG-13. Sure there were a couple of scenes that I assumed were most
likely edited out due to bloody carnage content, but aside from that
all the people who are killed by gunfire, and some by explosions, are
done so in a PG-13, or soft R, fashion. Come to think of it, I
don’t think I even heard any swearing. Yes, I do recall someone
uttering, ‘asshole,” but that’s as hard as the cursing gets.
When’s
the last time you saw someone smoke in a movie? I can’t remember
either. This question popped into my head the moment we see Snow in
the opening credits, his first scene is a nice, big close-up of him
lighting up.
Perhaps,
another “homage” to Plisskan?
You
be the judge on that one.
The
transfer is 2.40:1 and looks crisp, detailed and generally perfect. I
can only assume the blu-ray looks even more so. Both the blu-ray and
the standard DVD come with the same two featurettes: Breaking Into
Lockout (11:07) is a typical behind the scenes look, with a nice
breakdown of the car chase in the beginning, among other things. The
second one titled, A Vision Of The Future (10:44) is
essentially all about the design of the technology used and seen in
the film.
The
DVD is rounded out with the inclusion of six trailers: LOOPER, THE
RAID: REDEMPTION, STARSHIP TROOPERS: INVASION, ROBOT AND FRANK,
SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED, and a promotional spot for Blu-Ray.
In
closing I enjoyed this flick immensely and wouldn’t mind seeing
Marion Snow in more adventures, though, I suspect it won’t happen.
This movie hit theaters with little fanfare and left
it a
short time later the same way.
Words by: Shawn Francis
Check out Shawn's website: DVD NEWS FLASH
and his facebook page: DVD NEWS FLASH FB PAGE
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