sydney’s review published on Letterboxd:
Ahh, this movie. I saw it a few months ago, and at the time I enjoyed it but I wasn't in love. However, in the time since I have thought of it many times, and my urge to revisit it steadily grew. I finally bought a copy on blu-ray and watched it again last night. I raised my rating another star. This movie is...brilliant. Yes, BRILLIANT. It's an accidental brilliance, which is my absolute favorite kind.
I've seen plenty of recent movies that are supposed to excite or thrill or move you emotionally and I have to say that most of them have failed. For example, I enjoyed the Marvel movies. They are good, solid fun. But I never had the urge to go back and watch them again, and I couldn't figure out why. LOCKOUT is truly a revelation. It's showed me why those films failed to really win me over. The technical term would be that the 'tone' of this film is different, but I prefer to think of it as a personality. LOCKOUT has a living and breathing personality, huge as the space jail it's set in.
The first ten minutes are my favorite. There are some straight-up slapstick moments that I love. The first shots of him being punched, the hotel scene where he uses the blanket on the bed to lift the gun into the air to grab it, the whole sequence of him jumping off the building are all wonderful. It's well choreographed (even if the quick cuts are a little disorienting). In a later scene, Pearce stumbles out of a truck in a manner that (I KID YOU NOT) calls Buster Keaton to mind. Guy Pearce is clearly holding up this entire movie, and he does it incredibly well. Every single one of his lines is a joke, and the majority of them aren't even funny, but his delivery is so perfect, so natural, so charming that they seem to politely ask you to laugh. This is a movie about a goddamned maximum security prison in space, yet the fun is so pure that it's almost innocent. It isn't subtle, but it's gentle. I think the PG-13 rating served it well, because the tone isn't marred by some desire to wow you with gore.
One of the main reasons I wasn't 100% sold on this the first time I saw it was because I found the female lead obnoxious. On my second viewing, she grated on my nerves much less, and she truly serves her purpose well - a perfectly average springboard for Guy Pearce to throw jokes at. She certainly isn't anything special, but she does have a slight edge of toughness and by the end she exchanges witty banter and coy insults like a pro. She isn't a damsel in distress because she doesn't want to be rescued. She's not exactly super-capable but she's trying, and I have to give her character some credit for that.
The plot doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it makes just enough. The prisoners are entertaining. Peter Stormare does well with a character that doesn't get a whole lot of time to grow. The ending is satisfying and kind of hilarious. It all works together just right, and I never stopped being entertained and engaged.
This film is really important. Oh, it's stupid. I'm not trying to convince anyone that it isn't. The difference here is that there is no confusion about what kind of movie this is. There is no scene that manipulates you into feeling sad or heart-warmed. It is not another fill-in-the-blank puzzle that we've all seen a hundred times. It isn't dark or moody. It's special effects are meant to look cool, of course, but it never comes across as forced. When I see a movie like (the Marvel series, The Dark Knight, Skyfall, Prometheus, Oblivion, Jack Reacher, X-Men, Star Trek, I could keep going for a while here...) I get this feeling of LOOK AT THIS AND FEEL SAD. LOOK AT THIS AND FEEL EXCITED. LOOK AT THIS EXPLOSION AND TELL YOUR FRIENDS TO BUY A TICKET. I'm not saying I didn't like those movies, but when I left the theater I almost felt...used?
LOCKOUT exists on an entirely different plane. It presents itself to you as a novelty, and with a smile and a wink says 'I made this, I like it, and I hope you like it too'. The movies that do this are so rare, and I cherish the hell out of them.