PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*
I’m
not sure there are enough “space-prison” movies out there to
constitute a subgenre, but I tend to think that LOCKOUT is probably
at the top of that small heap. TIMELOCK, while mindlessly diverting,
might be possibly rank somewhere in the middle.
Far
in some standard galactic-empire future, Jessie Teegs (Maryam d’Abo)
pilots a cargo ship, and one of her tasks is to transport prisoners
to the various satellite-jails, the worst of which is the automated
facility Alpha Four. Among the all-male jailbait in the cargo hold
are many mean muthas, the worst of which is kickboxing mastermind
McMasters (Jeff Speakman)—and one "weak sister." Riley (Arye Gross)
is a petty thief mistakenly assigned to the maximum security
lockup—and since he has little in common with the (somewhat
homoerotic) bad boys, the thief ends up being the only ally of the
righteous lady pilot. The jailbirds break free and try to take
possession of Teegs’ ship, but she absconds with a data card they
need to fly the ship.
There’s
no plot to speak of, just a lot of running around and intermittent
fighting, until the mean boys are eventually defeated. Both the
action-scenes and the badinage between Riley and Teegs are tolerable
but unexceptional, and TIMELOCK’s sole sociological point of
interest is that it also belongs to a slightly larger heap of films
featuring a “tough girl-weak guy” teamup.
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