Locked Down (2021)

Directed by: Doug Liman | 118 minutes | drama, comedy, crime | Actors: Anne Hathaway, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Dulé Hill, Jazmyn Simon, Mark Gatiss, Stephen Merchant, Mindy Kaling, Ben Stiller, Ben Kingsley, Bobby Schofield, Tallulah Greive, Katie Leung, Eva Röse, Shereen Gray, Sam Spruell, Claes Bang, Lucy Boynton, Marek Larwood

It is not the first, but it is the first major production that has come about thanks to COVID-19: ‘Locked Down’. With stars like Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor almost continuously in the picture, surprising cameos (via Zoom or Skype of course) from some of the big Hollywood names, a celebrated director (Doug Liman) and talented screenwriter Steven Knight (‘Locke’, ‘Eastern Promises ‘, “Peaky Blinders”), expectations are high. ‘Locked Down’ presents itself as a heist film, but fans of action thrillers who count on a variant of ‘Ocean’s 11’ will have to adjust their expectations considerably.

Linda (Anne Hathaway) and Paxton (Chiwetel Ejiofor) live in a beautiful house on a quiet London street. The British government, like all other countries affected by the pandemic, has enforced a lockdown. The streets are deserted, people work from home or have been sent on leave. The uncertainty about the situation is great, hospitals cannot handle the flow of corona patients, nothing is known about a vaccine yet… welcome in the spring of 2020.

It is in this situation that it is especially difficult for people like Linda and Paxton. Just before the pandemic hit, Linda decided that the relationship was really over. What once attracted her to Paxton is gone. The two have grown apart. Paxton was already in a depression before Linda indicated that she no longer wanted to continue with him. He feels like he was born before the accident. He thinks that his past will continue to haunt him, so that despite his intelligence, he will never get a job at a level. Linda may be more successful at her job (she is CEO of the British branch of an American multinational), but thanks to the Corona crisis she has to perform actions that she absolutely does not support.

Most of ‘Locked Down’ is devoted to the struggles between the two Londoners. Those conversations range from perhaps a bit far-fetched to very plausible, but hey: the lockdown has a different effect on everyone, so what is credibility at all under these extreme circumstances? In any case, Hathaway and Ejiofor always manage to give their characters enough depth, where we really believe in the downward mental spiral in which they find themselves. Fortunately, it’s not all darkness; ‘Locked Down’ has enough funny moments to bring some air into the story.

Only in the last half hour do the crime movie fans get their money’s worth. The tension lies not only in whether the theft takes place at all (Linda and Paxton let the final decision depend on the circumstances of the moment supreme), but also in the execution. Although the crime in this (COVID-10-induced) situation actually requires hardly any preparation, and the now married couple are certainly not seasoned criminals, the easy job can still go wrong in all kinds of ways at first sight. ‘Locked Down’ is a somewhat strange genre mix, but it absolutely works: the film tells a lot about relationships, work and what a forced quarantine does to people.