Lockout Trailer

Well, this isn't really really a trailer, per se, but AICN has posted this promotional video with plenty of footage providing us with our first look at the next Luc Besson-produced neo-Eurospy movie, Lockout (here billed under its infinitely inferior alternate title of MS One, a moniker no doubt intended to evoke Besson's French hit District B13). As we learned when it was first announced in 2010, Lockout is not a conventional neo-Eurospy movie along the lines of Besson's Taken, From Paris With Love or Transporter movies. Instead, it is what movies like Agent 3S3: Operation Atlantis or Mission Stardust were to the Sixties Eurospy movies: a genre hybrid that happily handpicks elements from spy and sci-fi and anything else that comes to mind, throws it all in a blender and damn the consequences. This one's about a disgraced government agent who has to save the President's daughter (all standard, typically formulaic Eurospy or neo-Eurospy stuff)... in space! I like the twist. The footage here definitely makes it seem more sci-fi than spy, but it's clear that the film has that same overall feel and attitude as Besson's other neo-Eurospy fare. And, as I expected him to, Guy Pearce seems to make an absolutely perfect hero for one of these movies. I love his one-liners in the video. And I love that he gets to do what Liam Neeson never did in Taken when his teenage daughter was whining like a ten-year-old: he shushes Maggie Grace. (Grace is said to have a much larger role in Taken 2, and I hope Lockout proves why. Even in the brief snippets of her performance we see here, it looks like a definite improvement over Taken.) Lockout opens in France next month; Film District will release it in the United States later this year. Take a look: