SYLVESTER STALLONE & TOM SIZEMORE IN JOHN FLYNN'S 'LOCK UP'

 title: LOCK UP year: 1989 cast: Sylvester Stallone, Donald Sutherland, Tom Sizemore rating: ***1/2

Somewhere within the corny, bombastic, 80's-style action is the cool little John Flynn-directed prison flick LOCK UP starring Sylvester Stallone as a furloughed convict with six months to go — until being suddenly thrust from a nice location to a really nasty one thanks to villainous warden Donald Sutherland, more befitting an overboard science-fiction film (like later in THE HUNGER GAMES)... 

Sutherland’s cartoonishly vengeful tyrant aside, it’s Stallone (again backed by a Bill Conti score) doing his usual strong silent type and — with the aid of fellow prisoners like a talkative exposition-spouting yet ultimately mischievous Tom Sizemore (an energetic scene-stealer as usual) and gentle-giant Frank McCrae as the head of the jailhouse auto garage — he has some fun, fixing up a dream car to muscular 70's rock...

Sylvester Stallone in LOCK UP

All while befriending a naive, predictably doomed young convict while battling the big Indian from PREDATOR, FLESHBURN and 48 HRS — enter Sonny Landham as the gray-walled purgatory's formidable token bully...

But what works well eventually sinks to Sutherland’s hammy performance (albeit curbed slightly by ultimately affable chief-guard John Amos) — perhaps the writer’s partially to blame for comic-book dialog like "This is Hell — and I’m going to give you the guided tour" while even the dumb stuff — as Stallone goes through endless mental and physical torture to eventually confront his enemy — is brutally fun to watch.

Sylvester Stallone in LOCK UP

Sylvester Stallone in LOCK UP

Sylvester Stallone in LOCK UP

Sylvester Stallone in LOCK UP

Sylvester Stallone in LOCK UP with Tom Sizemore

Sylvester Stallone in LOCK UP

Prison furlough wife Darlanne Fluegel in LOCK UP

Sylvester Stallone and Sonny Landham in LOCK UP

Sonny Landham in LOCK UP

Tom Sizemore and Sylvester Stallone in LOCK UP

Tom Sizemore in LOCK UP

Donald Sutherland in LOCK UP

JOHN AMOS in LOCK UP

Sylvester Stallone and Larry Romano in LOCK UP

RIP Tom Sizemore from LOCK UP