Metacritic reviews

Lockout is the kind of manly nonsense no one wants to make anymore.

Lockout isn't high art, but it's ridiculous fun.

Luc Besson's producing career has been so geared toward lean, tough genre films that it's somewhat apt that he'd ape--or, if we're being kind, pay homage to--John Carpenter's preeminent sci-fi actioner Escape from New York with his latest, Lockout.

The idea of the president's daughter being held captive isn't blindingly original (it's an alarmingly dangerous occupation), but placing the story on a space station is a masterstroke, since we're about filled up to here with prison movies set on Earth.

Tackles a nifty futuristic premise with bargain-basement efficiency and a deadpan, devil-may-care attitude. It's an initially invigorating tactic that proves slapdash and unsatisfying over the long haul, reducing a potentially rich sci-fier to the level of a halfway decent time-killer

Directors Stephen St. Leger and James Mather fill the film's obvious narrative gaps with enough witty banter and tongue-in-cheek humor for audiences to overlook the subpar special effects used throughout.

With no thriller cliché left unused, the gaily outlandish plot is matched by tin-eared dialogue, ripe tough-guy overacting from the very game Pearce, and best-that-she-could acting from Grace.

Lockout consists of disciplined action pastiche, but much of its thundering engine borrows from better movies.

Lockout is, not unexpectedly, a potluck of derivative references.

Movies like this are supposed to be ridiculous on some level. It's part of the fun. But, dang. Falling through space, popping your parachute and landing on the one empty stretch of freeway in some bustling future city? C'mon. We all have our limits.