Locked Down
Before long, a marquee cast and crew were bound to make a respectable narrative film taking place amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.
With director Doug Liman and writer Steven Knight at the helm, guiding an ensemble led by Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor, the experimental Locked Down is indeed a success — though hopefully closer to a one-off than a trend-starter.
The London-set comedy centers on estranged married couple Linda (Hathaway) and Paxton (Ejiofor), whose strife is magnified by the nationwide lockdown that largely keeps them confined to their home. There, the tedium and frustrations of the pandemic are brilliantly conveyed through numerous Zoom calls with friends and colleagues (including Bens Kingsley and Stiller), complete with the various technological glitches and user errors that many viewers have experienced these past 10 months.
Within this relatable, borderline universal predicament, a considerable amount of humor shines through, namely via Paxton, a poet and former motorcycle-riding wild man who’s lost his spark driving a van for work these past few years. Easily the quirkiest role he’s had since Kinky Boots, Ejiofor effortlessly plays this big-hearted clown and earns most of his laughs through inane but well-intentioned responses to his spouse’s frustrated musings, which Hathaway delivers with committed comic exasperation.
Not merely a claustrophobic marital dramedy, Locked Down nicely expands its reach when a serendipitous convergence of the couple’s professional lives puts them in a position to pull off a fool-proof heist. The planning and implementation of the job is handled by Liman with Soderberghian precision — Ocean’s 2 would have been a decent alternative title — and full of charming, lighthearted moments, much of them revolving around complications from Paxton’s hilariously obvious fake ID.
This final stretch and the bulk of the film are crisply lensed by Remi Adefarasin (Match Point), and though the insertion of authentic-feeling Zoom imagery allows Mindy Kaling, Claes Bang, and others to participate remotely, such footage may feel cheap to certain viewers and/or too much of a reminder of the new normal and the pandemic’s harsher realities.
The reliance on Zoom to assemble an ensemble is also something that ideally won’t become the norm for writers and directors looking to embark upon new projects while traditional filmmaking remains a challenge, but as a pioneering attempt, Locked Down provides a shining example of how to properly implement that technology and leaves behind an excellent document of these unusual times.
Grade: B-plus. Rated R. Available to stream via HBO Max
(Photo: Susie Allnutt)
