SummaryJust as they decide to separate, Linda (Anne Hathaway) and Paxton (Chiwetel Ejiofor) find life has other plans when they are stuck at home in a mandatory lockdown. Co-habitation is proving to be a challenge, but fueled by poetry and copious amounts of wine, it will bring them closer together in the most surprising way.
SummaryJust as they decide to separate, Linda (Anne Hathaway) and Paxton (Chiwetel Ejiofor) find life has other plans when they are stuck at home in a mandatory lockdown. Co-habitation is proving to be a challenge, but fueled by poetry and copious amounts of wine, it will bring them closer together in the most surprising way.
It’s a daring mix of genres, but it works, as though Noah Baumbach had been called in to do a rewrite on “How to Steal a Million.” Steven Knight wrote and directed one of the best (“Locke”) and worst (“Serenity”) films of the last decade, but when he is good, he is very, very good, and his skillful handing of relationships and claustrophobia and corporate-speak is matched by Liman’s ability to bring all of this to fruition.
If Hathaway and Ejiofor are sometimes saddled with talky theatrical monologues that sound far more like a screenwriter's fever dream than the words of any ordinary human, they also commit in a way that manages to makes the leaps in tone and logic work, probably better than they should.
The coolest heist of 2021, where there was no blood shed or anyone hurt on the process, I had to rewatch these movie over and over cos it’s just so cool. It just showed what some people are going through being locked and being honest with oneself once again.
Maybe this all works, accidentally or not, as a time capsule of very contemporary irritation. Will future audiences look back on Locked Down and feel some of our pain, watching two good actors sputter through a simulacrum of cabin-fever conflict?
The picture’s just-a-lark tone, emphasised by the quick turnaround from script to final product, proves to be a double-edged sword: Locked Down feels like a fleetingly fun experiment that would have benefited from more time.
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.
Locked Down is a grating yank into a nasty headspace, a pompous sort of fury. There is no empathy for the common cause of quarantine in the film, only spittle and outrage and corny existential angst.
I expected a lot from this movie going into it, due to the subject matter of two humans trapped within their own frailties, together, during a lockdown we all have experienced for nearly a year now. Locked Down is a love story, one that is very palpable to many of us in this real life, with an adventurous twist I didn’t see coming. Locked Down was written by Steven Knight (Serenity, Dirty Pretty Things), and directed by Doug Limon (American Made, Mr. And Mrs. Smith). It stars Oscar Winner Anne Hathaway as Linda, and Oscar nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor as Paxton, two very flawed, very real lovers at the end of their romantic cycle, yet imprisoned together still as a result of the COVID-19 virus lockdown. These are very relatable characters, with relatable individual flaws, forced to stay together physically when emotionally the relationship has clearly run its course. There are so many profound, and funny, moments in this film. Paxton chides a toilet paper hoarder by asking how many arses she has. Linda recollects her Grandma as a Calvinist. Hathaway delivers an amazing scene describing the reality of recovering smokers using the imagery of serpents coming through the floor. And her explanation for why she didn’t tell him she was smoking again, that if she didn’t tell, it didn’t happen, is an amazing allegory for the lies and cover ups we tell ourselves when we fail. I give Locked Down a 4.5 out of 5 for what it is. A love story. While it may not be the finest love story of our time, it is certainly the most authentic in its characters and delivery. I encourage anyone at the precipice of relationship we all find ourselves in eventually to treat themselves to what may happen, if we simply continue to love, and endure.
Disappointing and frustrating.
Very clearly a reflection of a blatant attempt to exploit its own simplicity by believing that it offers something more dignified or even substantial.
Saying: "it could've been better" is offensive because it's certainly clear that those intentions did not exist in this production, and I say that from all the parties involved.
It's clear that Doug Liman did this in a hurry, and without enthusiasm, but he leaves me even more uncertain about what he will deliver with Chaos Walking, considering the delays and the long reshoots.
I’ll give it points for trying to be topical and a motions for filming amid the pandemic, but the film is so aimless and takes way too long to get into the heisting.