Luc Besson knows what works for action movies and he’s not above using that formula over and over again until he gets it just right.
Besson will produce Lockout, an upcoming space thriller about a man wrongly convinced of espionage who is offered his freedom if he’ll rescue the president’s daughter from an outer space prison that’s been taken over by its inmates. Maggie Grace (TV’s Lost, Taken) will play the daughter while Guy Pearce (Memento) will star as Liam Neeson … I mean the man who has to save Grace. Peter Stormare and Tom Hollander will co-star. The script is by Besson and the film’s co-directors James Mather and Stephen St. Leger.
The Wrap reports that the film’s prison orbits 50 miles above the Earth and houses 500 of the world’s most dangerous prisoners who are kept asleep — that is, until they awaken.
The Buzz: As much as I’m a Luc Besson fan, I wasn’t that taken with Taken. Besides the general bad-assery of Liam Neeson, the film was a formulaic action movie with the added absurdity of a supposed spy who’s practically seven feet tall.
Lockout, which seems to be a blatant Taken rip-off, doesn’t sound much more promising. Hopefully it will have some kinetic action scenes but something tells me Guy Pearce, while a talented actor, won’t be doing his own stunts like Jason Statham or Jet Li have done in previous Besson produced movies. Maybe he’ll at least be given some futuristic weapons to play with.
If done right, this movie could be a cool combination of Escape from New York and The Fifth Element. More likely than not, though, it will be another forgettable Bessen produced action movie – holding down the fort until Bessen steps behind the camera again himself.
