Pandemic movie Locked Down has been described by Wikipedia the font of all knowledge as a rom-com heist.Don’t be fooled by that label because Locked Down is light on the romance, there are few laughs and, worst of all, barely even a heist.
Directed by Doug Liman (Go, Mr & Mrs Smith) and starring Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor in a two-hander, Locked Down was conceived, produced, filmed and edited all within a few months from when the world went into COVID quarantine.
So, you expect it to be a bit scrappy, and you forgive some of the stilted staging and camera setups – because most filmmakers struggle to make two people talking in one room feel dynamic.
But what’s less easy to forgive is Locked Down’s overall deflatedness, even when the action moves into bigger environments. And the fact this story with not much meat on the bone stretches out for almost two hours when it should have been a lean 90 minutes is a serious misstep.
It never justifies its length, especially as it doesn’t even get into the heist part until well past the halfway mark, and at least three too many deep-and-meaningfuls with diminishing returns.
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Linda (Hathaway) is a high-flying corporate type working as the London boss of a luxe fashion business. Her partner Paxton (Ejiofor) is a literature-loving delivery driver whose ambitions have been thwarted by a criminal assault record from a decade earlier.
A few weeks into COVID, Linda and Paxton are both locked down in their London townhouse, which would be stressful enough without the fact they’ve recently separated. Linda is holed up in the bedroom, working remotely from her desk while Paxton is camped out in a spare room.
Zoomers popping up in cameos include characters played by Stephen Merchant, Ben Stiller, Mindy Kaling, Claes Bang, Dulé Hill, Ben Kingsley and Mark Gatiss.
Between goading each other into confessing their secret vices, Linda and Paxton realise their jobs have given them an opportunity to pull off a diamond heist from Harrods. Yeah, that escalated quickly.
The heist itself is more like a casual walk-and-talk as they meander about Harrod’s – which, if nothing else, is a reminder of how amazing the store’s food hall is, and a gander at the below-floors backroom operation holds some fascination.
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But this is no fast-paced, heart-in-your-throat heist with countdowns, switched out CCTV footage or clever ruses.
This is a heist as if choreographed by indie director Richard Linklater rather than Liman, whose filmography includes plenty of thrilling action movies, including Edge Of Tomorrow and The Bourne Identity.
With its propensity for dialogue scenes where Hathaway and Ejiofor expound at great length though not with great substance, at the very least, a fun caper should have been the pay-off. And if this had been a Linklater movie, you know at least the writing would have been good.
What Locked Down should get credit for though is the way it captured the restlessness of being stuck at home last year, that sense of never-ending days leading to poor sleep – which is insightful but not necessarily something everyone is looking to relive, especially as parts of the world are emerging from it thanks to vaccine programs or elimination strategies.
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Locked Down also touches on the very real phenomena of the copious self-examinations born out of forced changes, where people came to realisations during the pandemic that the life they were living isn’t the one they want.
Locked Down is one of the first pandemic movies to be released, and there are probably more to come, but many TV series and specials got there first. Most of them were passable, limited as they were by logistics but a few of them were even excellent (Staged and the Mythic Quest quarantine episode are the best examples).
But all these projects that seek to recreate the conditions of the pandemic on screen, with its drunk Zooms and ambitions to bake bread, have a challenge in crafting something that has something worth saying about a hellish time without making it feel as if we were back there.
Despite some decent performances from Hathaway and Ejiofor, Locked Down often feels as monotonous as lockdown itself.
Rating: 2/5
Locked Down is in cinemas now
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