In Locked Down, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Anne Hathaway portray a couple of over a decade who are on the outs. Their decision to split up couldn’t have worse timing. It’s the early days of the Coronavirus epidemic and this is London under lockdown. Although they have a pretty nice pad, being stuck together in the British capital is testing both partner’s patience, mental capacity, and… well, pretty much everything.
The HBO Max flick bows on the streaming network on January 14 and is exactly the quarantine comedy/thrill ride/relationship tome we’ve been waiting nine months for. Did we mention the fact that it’s directed by Doug Liman (Bourne movies, Edge of Tomorrow)? Although it starts out as a film about being Locked Down during a once-in-a-century pandemic while your quarantine partner is your as soon as this is over ex before all is said and done the film had morphed into a heist flick with the uber-luxurious Harrod’s as our site of stealing.
The story is firmly in the filmmaker’s wheelhouse, but there’s something else at work here and it is utterly brilliant and wickedly entertaining. Many moments of the film come at us like we have been living, on Zoom—complete with buffering hiccups and video freezing at the most inopportune (i.e., hilarious) times.
Ejiofor is Paxton, a man who has been living with regret for well over a decade. He’s an intensely intelligent bloke who stuck up for a dear friend when his life was being threatened and, in the process, beat a fellow to a pulp to save his mate’s life. That action would put him in jail for a short spot, but more importantly, would result in him having a record. That has kept him from any kind of professional forward momentum—basically the entire time he has been in a relationship with Hathaway’s Linda.
It never really bothered her. But it started to as Linda’s hard-earned ascent to the upper executive echelons of the enormous media monolith pays off with promotion after promotion—all while her life love’s fixation with the past has robbed him of a future. Now, his wallowing about his job driving a delivery van for Ben Kingsley’s company, that’s pushing her buttons and not in a good way.
On the day we meet these two, the newly furloughed Paxton is finding new ways to be despondent, including feeling that he has to sell his beloved motorbike—something we learn has a deep connection to his early days with Linda. Meanwhile, Linda has to get on a Zoom call with a handful of people who represent the “event” department of the billion-dollar media conglomerate. What she has to do is not pleasant and is reflective of something countless souls have had to deal with, regardless of whatever side of the call they’re on, throughout this pandemic. Instantly, we have much to grab onto with these two that hundreds of millions of folks across the globe can connect with and commiserate.
One gets a true and profound sense of what life was like during that first London lockdown, all while Liman’s electrically brings Steven Knight’s (The Girl in the Spider’s Web) richly nuanced screenplay to life in the most unique of manners. From the nightly 7 p.m. salute to the frontline healthcare workers of The National Health Service (NHS), that will cause one to become overwhelmingly verklempt, to the way that Paxton takes to the streets on occasion to read poetry (one of his favorite type of written word) at top volume to the hundreds gathered at their open windows.
We’ve seen the news, that type of thing happened all over the globe, such as that viral video of the opera singer in Italy entertaining his own neighbors—people Paxton calls his “fellow prisoners.”
Linda and Paxton’s worlds collide in the most organically awesome way as the high-end department stores of London are emptying their closed down locales of their more valuable merchandise. Even though the entire country is at home, there is still a wee bit of work to do to ensure a successful lockdown for businesses who fear looting.
For example, Kingsley’s company has been tapped to move out merchandise from three businesses in the English capital, including the internationally known Harrods. Guess who has organized the in-store media-heavy layout at the luxury department store that includes a 3.5 million pound diamond? Yup, it’s Linda. Guess who used to work at Harrods for five years not too long ago and is adored by everyone who is employed by the British retail institution—from security to the floor managers? Linda.
Our being Locked Down-centric film has now become a heist flick, especially when Linda learns something about the diamond, where it’s going, and most importantly… to whom.
The will they or won’t they (steal the diamond) aspect is enhanced by some truly smart elements, sprinkled throughout by Knight in his tightly woven tapestry of a tale. These are layered characters, with a history that is often given great detail, while other aspects are merely alluded to so that they can fester, marinate, and come out at just the right cinematic time resulting in the most pleasing and powerful plot riding experience. This is the screenwriter who gave audiences both the character-heavy The Hundred-Foot Journey with Helen Mirren and the Russian mobster-centric Eastern Promises with Naomi Watts and Viggo Mortensen. It seems, given that background, that the story at the heart of Locked Down is also firmly in his wheelhouse.
The writer effortlessly moves us from heartwarming and heartbreaking emotive tethering to terse and tense thrills that firmly belong to the heist milieu. It is truly a gift for those of us still living that life of being Locked Down. Liman must have lost it (in a good way, of course) when he received the script thinking of all the filmmaking muscles he could flex with the timely drama.
Liman illustrates why he is one of the most fascinating helmers working today with his latest. Who else but him could deliver a relatable pandemic quarantine yarn that also keenly portrays the elusive concepts of justice, karma, and yes, freedom and everything that means? This is one of those films that takes a moviemaker’s innate gifts and not only challenges them with situational issues (hello… a pandemic) but allows the artist to flourish with curveballs that would have been unthinkable two years prior.
Paxton is inhabited by Ejiofor in such a way that he has not only crafted a supremely compelling character, but his portrayal is piercing in its ability to encapsulate what so many felt facing down a pandemic with no end in sight. The esteemed actor also captures that sense of fleeting youth that has given way to a present that finds many feeling as if they have lost a slice of their soul.
His partner in crime, Hathaway, gives us a hurricane of a performance. She runs the gamut of the human emotional spectrum as her frustration frequently boils over in such a controlled explosive way that is some of her best work. The Oscar-winning actress is some of us, who have let professional success blind us to the bigger picture. What exactly does our business do, who are they doing it with and for, and what kind of footprint are they leaving on the world? We often talk about carbon footprint, but there are others as well that are equally as damaging. Hathaway delivers a Linda that should also mirror another large swath of folks whose view of life was drastically altered the moment Coronavirus landed on our shores.
It is an entertaining turn, yes, but it also is one that will make you think.
That’s fitting, as it reflects the impact of the entire experience that is Locked Down.
Grade: A