Is it so shocking that, even though the COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t evaporated, Hollywood has managed to give us a pandemic movie? "Locked Down," now available on HBO Max, is the first of its kind — cast, shot, edited and released — under severe safety restrictions — in just a few months.
Director Doug Liman and screenwriter Steven Knight deserve credit for the risk. It helps that the movie itself is light on its feet, never too serious and goes down easy.
Now, here’s the bad news. As you’re watching “Locked Down,” all you can think about is what was the point of the whole thing? Sure, it stars Anne Hathaway (always great) as a corporate exec serving her bosses orders (a playfully slimy Ben Stiller ) to fire her team of co-workers. Chiwetel Ejiofor (another superb actor) is her boyfriend of 10 years, a package delivery guy who just got fired from his job. They’ve broken up, but can’t really separate due to the lockdown. All they can do is socially distance from each other in their posh London house.
So far, so gimmicky. Right? It’s a stunt, but it works, for the most part, playfully relying on the consummate talents of both actors as they feed off of each other’s venom. In these early scenes, "Locked Down" works wonders by being immensely relatable to the current situation in which we find ourselves: Zoom meetings, toilet-paper hoarders at supermarkets, forgetting to bring a mask with you, lots of alcohol. But the gimmick soon starts to dwindle. As Linda starts to hate herself for being a corporate sellout, Paxton gets a new gig doing his former boss’ dirty work out on illegal assignments in a van, using a fake ID him as Edgar Allen Poe, while, at the same time, dreaming of going away to some remote part of the world and turning poet.
That’s when "Locked Down" unfortunately goes from promising rom-com to heist movie, as Paxton and Linda decide that, due to the connections from both their jobs, robbing a $3 million diamond from Harrods is actually a smart thing to do during a pandemic. She has the security clearance to get into the luxurious London department store, and he’s the motorist who will whisk her away form the scene of the crime.
Liman, a 20+ year veteran filmmaker who has delivered major highs (“The Bourne Identity,” “Go,” “Edge of Tomorrow” “Swingers”) and major lows (“Getting In,” “Jumper,” “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”) doesn’t seem to know what kind of film he wants to make here. Of course, much of the blame lies in Steven Knight’s schizo script, an amalgam of contradictions that is filled with all-too-convenient implausibilities to fully be taken at face value. It turns out the most surprising part of this COVID-filmed experiment is how there barely is any creative experiment to be found.
Edward Berger seems to have settled on what comes next. His Lance Armstrong biopic, starring Austin Butler, is now holding casting calls, with production eyed for January.