manofsan

I enjoyed this movie for the nice action-oriented thrill-ride it was. Nobody watches a Schwarzenegger or Stallone movie for the acting performances. Is anyone going to claim that Expendables was full of quality acting and plausible storyplots? Nonsense. This is a genre of film which doesn't require any of that for its appeal. I'd compare this to Escape from New York, which younger viewers may not be familiar with, but which has a lot in common with this movie. Lockout takes that same type of story premise and updates it to a space-based setting, and uses more modern special fx, along with Luc Besson's Euro-stylization. If you like Philip K Dick stuff, you'll like this. And who doesn't like a good actor like Guy Pearce?

What I liked in the original was that Boxleitner's character Tron was a plucky monitor program taking on the big Master Control Program that ruled the mainframe/grid/whatever. Bridges' character had god-like powers because he was a user, but Tron was a spunky fighter.

We hardly get to see Tron in this sequel. I'm fine with the fact that when we do see him, he turns out to be a henchman or enforcer for the evil CLU. But we hardly get to see him or his awesome fighting capabilities. When he does finally flip from bad to good, it's too brief and there's not enough buildup to it. He changes to good and sacrifices himself in an all too brief instant. Even when Darth Vader switches over to good and kills the Emperor, we at least first get to see the drama of him watching his own son Luke suffer at the emperor's hands. We don't even get just a little bit of dramatic impact when Tron converts and helps out the good guys.

The movie and its sequel are both named after Tron, the plucky agile freedom fighter hero from the original. They could have at least given him a bit more screen time for his death scene. If I had made this movie, I would have at least had Tron accompanying the good guys and clearing a few baddies out of their way using his awesome fighting skills.

The only hint of a better fate for Tron was his plunge into the water, and the change of his colors - like some sort of final redemption. They could have at least made that more poignant.

This movie is a rip-off of "Mississippi Burning" just as the movie "Shaurya" was a rip-off of "A Few Good Men".

There is an unfortunate tendency in Bollywood cinema to plagiarize successful Hollywood pot-boilers down to the letter, and pass them off as locally-inspired profound morality plays. The local Indian viewing audiences have for the most part never seen the Hollywood originals, and thus end up feeling awed at what they think are totally original story concepts.

Hey, I've got an idea for an Indian sci-fi film: it will feature guys with swords made out of light, and it will start off with the words "long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away" Hey, as long as it's in Hindi, nobody will be the wiser...