One-liners, slapdash sci-fi in 'Lockout'

Why the Scots, of course.

At least that's according to the sci-fi circa 2079 action flick “Lockout,” directed by a pair of Irish filmmakers: James Mather and Stephen St. Leger. They co-wrote it with producer Luc Besson, the prodigious if seldom proficient French action filmmaker.

The MS One is a hulking, orbiting jail that puts its prisoners in “stasis,” or a deep sleep. (And you thought incarceration costs are high now?) But while the president's daughter, Emilie (Maggie Grace), visits MS One to question its methods, a prisoner easily gets loose and soon the ship is overrun by criminals who immediately fall in line behind the Scottish Alex (Vincent Regan) and his more psychotic sibling Hydell (Joe Gilgun).

Two secret service men take charge of the hostage rescue — the hawkish Langral (played by the always interesting Peter Stormare, whose odd Swedish rhythms made him a Coen brothers favorite) and the more measured Shaw (Lennie James).

Obviously, such awkward circumstances can only be resolved by a solo, heroic mission from a reluctant, irascible protagonist. Ours is Snow (Guy Pearce), an agent who has been unjustly deemed a criminal after a mission gone wrong, but is given the chance to win his freedom by saving the president's daughter.

He's seemingly the last person left in a grim, briefly glimpsed industrialized world (the Oval Office has been lowered into a bunker) who still smokes and carries a Zippo. Clad in a T-shirt that reads “Warning: Offensive,” he speaks almost entirely in sarcastic one-liners. We first see him taking a brutal interrogation beating and explaining his whereabouts to Langral as busy “trampolining your wife.”

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