A much better trailer that gives you a better sense of the film.

Can’t believe I went so long without posting something. It’s been a busy week.

Anyway. I saw Lockout last night and I enjoyed it. It’s a very entertaining film, not very deep but it’s very fun and fast paced. One big problem is one of the major villains has an almost indecipherable Scots accent. The bad guys are mostly two dimensional. Aside from that, its the story of a CIA agent framed and sent to an orbital prison, but he gets to make a deal to rescue the President’s daughter who is stuck up there during a breakout/riot. It’s simple and direct but its crammed with action and suspense. Snow (Pearce) is a barrel of one liners that are often pretty funny. He’s sort of like a futuristic John McClane (Die Hard).

Guy Pearce is great as usual. Its good to see him in a starring role. The guy is really underused and underrated.

There’s also a couple of jokes at the expense of Democrats which is something you don’t see too often.

A remake of Total Recall that looks interesting. Poor Colin Farrell can’t carry a movie though, so I wonder if it will do any business. I liked his Fright Night remake but it didn’t do any business.

I watched the film finally on my ipad and while I could see room for improvement it was certainly an acceptable film in terms of quality. Could have used more humor and snappier dialog. But it did a fairly good job of showing the kind of statist take over of business we’ve been seeing in the last three years. Its certainly a timely movie. If you haven’t read the novel by Ayn Rand this is just part one of three. Its hard to say if the other parts will be finished but they certainly gave it a good effort here and one thing struck me as ironic about it. The plot involves a railroad baroness trying to update her railroad lines with metal against government wishes, The state is trying to put the squeeze on her company and Rearden steel which has some new super-metal that might put steel companies out of business. So in the film the state is trying to stop a high speed rail project while in real life the state of California is trying to shove one down the people’s throats in the middle of a budget crisis.

The problem I have with Rand’s story is it makes some good points but is missing a larger point about government. It colludes with companies favoring some at the expense of others. In Rand’s story successful companies are punished so the failures can prosper. The reality is a little more complex. But as we saw with the corrupt bailouts of GM and Chrysler all kinds of sick favoritism went on and the public had their money wasted on the Volt, a car no one wants.

This week we get to see if the Supreme Court strikes down Obamacare another case of the government overreaching its power and destroying industries. Hopefully the film makers of this series get to finish what they started.

Here’s John Stossel talking about the film and why its relevant