Lockout (2012)

I caught "Lockout" on a whim. Not a particularly good or bad movie, really -- kind of a glib action movie, I guess. I came in with low expectations, and those were met. Haha! Is that a success or a failure? I don't know. The story was thinly-written, and the characters were, too. Luc Besson was producer, and some of his wry hand at action movie-making was certainly evident in it. Not nearly as good as one of my all-time favorite trash movies, "Deep Rising" (1998) -- which still holds my personal record for one of the most entertaining bits of cinematic fluff, ever. "Lockout" aspires to rise to the level of "Deep Rising," but falls short. It's like "Escape from New York" in space, although it's not nearly in that league. Guy Pearce is in full smartass mode throughout it. One of the things about it that annoyed me is the movie is ostensibly set in 2079, but it's full of pop culture references that are aimed squarely at today's audience -- and, really, last century's. It would have been nice for some of the characters to be like "Huh?" when one of those references got glibly tossed out.