Catastrophe strikes during the President’s daughter’s humanitarian
mission to an orbiting space prison, and she’s take hostage during an
inmate uprising. Now she’s isolated in space, surrounded by hundreds of
hostile inmates, and time is running short before the prison station’s
orbit decays and it plummets to Earth.
Rescue seems impossible.
Thankfully, the country has just the guy for the job.
Wise-cracking ex-CIA agent Snow (Guy Pearce) is caught in a set-up.
After attempting to intervene and save an ex-contact’s life,
Snow makes off with a valuable briefcase, but is framed for murder and
treason. Captured, interrogated, and beaten, Snow is told he’ll be put
into stasis for 30 years… without a trial.
However, at the same moment, events are unfolding which will lead to
his opportunity for freedom. During a humanitarian investigation of the
treatment of inmates aboard the orbital prison MS One, the President’s
daughter (Maggie Grace) is captured during a prison uprising. She had
suspected that wealthy corporations were funding research on prisoners
in stasis in order to test the potential for deep space travel. She also
feared that the stasis itself is harmful to prisoners, potentially
causing dementia. While interviewing a prisoner, however, her team is
the catalyst in the escape that leads to the mass awakening and
freeing of the prisoners, and her subsequent captivity.
A direct assault on the prison is deemed too dangerous, both for the
President’s daughter, and to the stability of the station. Should the
station fall out of orbit, it could obliterate the eastern seaboard. So
the plan becomes to send in a single operative to attempt to rescue her.
Snow.
Even though it sounds like a suicide mission, Snow accepts. It’s his
only chance to escape stasis, and his associate who hid the briefcase is
on the station. He’s going in.
Onboard, a cheesy action movie with a dash of action movie romance
ensues. Snow is a wise cracking, exasperated pessimist, and yet sparks
fly between he and the President’s daughter. In a nearby space station,
the President and the Secret Service try to coordinate his mission
remotely, giving plenty of opportunity for Snow to balk at directions
and crack wise. The villains are wonderfully menacing, and often are
their own worst enemies. There’s plenty of fun to be had watching them
chew scenery, threaten hostages, and fight with each other. And of
course, eventually the station loses orbit, so the countdown clock to
destruction is on.
Pearce is fun as the singly named Snow, and Grace gives him someone
to trade barbs with nicely. There arent that many great action scenes,
per se, but the story manages to keep your interest pretty well, and
then the characters move it along.
It’s a fun enough movie, but never really over the top enough for me
to fully enjoy it as cheese. Nor is it quite serious enough for me to
embrace it as a straightforward actioner. As it is, it’s kind of a
light, disposable, don’t think to hard action flick, but I doubt it’s
anything that would make a “
Cheese-Tastic Classic”
one day. Were one of the mind to, you could easily pick a thousand
holes in it, or point out some of the occasionally bad CGI, or the
low-budget acting, but the movie knows what it is and just tries to give
you some entertainment for your ticket price.
) goes sour, the two leads are forced to determine why. What they
learn is that the car theft was actually a mission to recover the
financial data of a crime cartel, contained in a computer in one of the
cars.
