10 Greatest "Die Hard On A...." Movies
3. Lockout: Die Hard In A Space Prison
Relocating a premise to outer space is itself a fairly well-worn trope. However in the case of Lockout, it’s actually done to extremely enjoyable effect. Die Hard in a Space Prison. If that sentence alone wasn’t enough to pique your interest in this movie, then Lockout probably isn't the film for you.
Guy Pearce is on great form as our central hero Snow, a former government agent wrongly convicted of murder and espionage who finds himself selected for a suicide mission to rescue the President’s daughter from the aforementioned space prison. Constantly cracking wise, Snow also makes it is mission to piss off any authority figure he can find at any given opportunity.
You may notice that the plot also owes a strong debt to John Carpenter's "Escape" movies, and there's definitely a touch of the Plissken's about Pearce's Snow too. Good use is made of the movie being set inside a futuristic high-security prison with it's legion of bad guys having nothing at all to lose.
As with Olympus Has Fallen, the main baddie is slightly lacking but the action is extremely enjoyable throughout and Pearce’s performance raises Lockout above the standard action movie pack.