‘Locked Down’ on HBO: The pandemic sucks the fun out of a promising rom-com heist flick
Years from now, when you speak of “Locked Down” — and you won’t — be kind. The makers of this COVID-era rom-com heist picture gave it their all, shooting a hopeless script by a seasoned professional in early fall 2020 in London as the coronavirus pandemic raged on.
They were guided by director Doug Liman, who made “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” the first “Bourne” movie and “Edge of Tomorrow.” Two highly charismatic and versatile stars, Anne Hathaway (talking like Rosalind Russell in “His Girl Friday” after 12 shots of espresso) and Chiwetel Ejiofor (in game, sardonic counterpoint), talk themselves to death as a longtime couple experiencing a breakup in lockdown, followed by some informal, illegal couples therapy by way of a diamond theft in Herrods.
Soul-sick public relations executive Linda (Hathaway) is in charge of a Chicago-based firm’s London office, her job requiring her to lay off various colleagues in advance of her big pandemic-driven local project. This involves the temporary closing of various department stores, chiefly Herrods.
Linda’s in charge of packing and storing the merchandise, including and especially a multimillion dollar diamond and its impressive replica (used for a fashion show, or something; I rewound twice to get the exposition straight; couldn’t verify; got hungry and went to the fridge and forgot all about it).
She has decided to leave Paxton (Ejiofor), an easygoing shell of a former “wild child” who loves the open road, his motorcycle and his self-pity. Paxton has just been furloughed from a moving company but his boss (Ben Kingsley, seen on Zoom as are most of the supporting characters) wants to pay him off the books to work the department store project.
Linda’s light-bulb idea: Why not steal the real diamond, store the fake one, donate $1 million to the COVID-swamped National Health Service and keep the rest? It’s all right there, in the trailer. Linda and Paxton spend an hour of “Locked Down” in a claustrophobic relationship comedy, followed by a half-hour of uninteresting heist planning, capped by a final lap at the legendary store, when things finally get going but in a half-hearted, plausibility-free way that really makes you feel the pandemic sucking the fun out of moviemaking.
The script comes from Steven Knight, whose early dramas “Dirty Pretty Things” and “Eastern Promises” worked well and hit hard. More recently, Knight wrote and directed the astonishing pratfall that was “Serenity” (Matthew McConaughey, wasting away in Margaritaville) and, earlier, the insufferable Bradley Cooper-as-intolerable-chef drama “Burnt.”
Knight also wrote the diverting Tom Hardy tour-de-force “Locke,” which unfurled as a single, fateful solo car trip featuring the title character working the phone for 90 minutes. “Locked Down” positively drips with monologues, too, that feel twice as long as the entirety of “Locke.”
Liman combines the Zoom meeting scenes (many) with the “real” stuff well enough, shooting in a mixture of “Bourne”-y handheld and gliding camera moves when Old Hollywood glamour is called for. The actors take your mind off things when they can: I like the way Hathaway jabs her elbow at the elevator buttons for punctuation, and the ardent commitment to language Ejiofor brings to his character’s public poetry readings. But a movie shouldn’t rely on Hathaway and Ejiofor to shell-game your attention away from the movie itself.
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‘LOCKED DOWN’
1.5 stars
MPAA rating: R (for language throughout and some drug material)
Running time: 1:58
Out now on HBO Max.
