Remember Taken…the 2008 Liam Neeson vehicle in which he ran around Paris with a gun searching for his daughter who was kidnapped by sex traffickers? Well, if you liked that then, rather than wait for the sequel (which is currently in negotiations), check out the new Guy Pearce led Lockout, which is basically Taken but in outer space. Oddly enough Lockout stars Maggie Grace, the same actress who played the ‘taken’ daughter in Taken, as the daughter of the President who is kidnapped by violent sex-starved prisoners in a maximum security prison in space. Pearce plays a falsely convicted ex-government agent who hunts down the missing daughter in exchange for his freedom. According to the IFTN website, Lockout is currently shooting in Belgrave until mid December with Irish writer/directors Stephen St. Leger and James Mather making their directorial feature debut with a relatively massive budget of $30 million. Not bad for these two Irish men with a background in TV commercials whose only other film to date was the almost entirely digitally created short Prey Alone. Lockout is being produced by Luc Besson who co-wrote Taken with Robert Mark Kamen. Besson also penned Nikita, The Fifth Element and The Transporter among other classics as well as producing the brilliant I Love You Philip Morris in 2009. Despite the fact that this film reeks of 'girl as victim, male as protector' - a storyline that, in my opinion, is a tad outdated, Lockout has all the makings of a good thriller - after all, in space, nobody can hear you scream...!!!!
