With Locked Down, the director Doug Liman has tried to create an amusing expression of despair. The film showcases a period sometime during the first lockdown when everything was seeming to be extremely weird. Nobody was allowed to step out of their houses, the pandemic was on its epitome and there was a general sense of anxiety, chaos, and unpredictability. People hadn’t adapted to this new normal. Even the not so technologically adept group of people had started using zoom calls. It all seemed unreal, something that we had never thought would happen in our lifetime. The conditions per se felt like an apocalypse, as shown in the mainstream Hollywood films. Everything was affecting the people psychologically. They weren’t able to keep their nerves, which in turn made them act or behave in a fashion with which they wouldn’t have been related in normal times.
Locked Down makes use of this psychological imbalance we all felt in some proportions and tries to knit a humorous and light-hearted narrative around it.
‘Locked Down’ Summary
Anne Hathaway who plays Linda Thurman stays with her partner Paxton Riggs, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor. On one hand, Linda is the CEO of a big handbag company, Paxton is a delivery truck driver. He is forced to work in a blue-collar job due to an incident that happened a few years ago. He was charged with assault and ever since that tag had prevented him from living a life that he deserved. Things get messier as the government announces the lockdown. Linda has contrasting ideologies as compared to the organization she has been working in. The nature of work and the demand of the organization is just not going well with her. To add to that Paxton’s behavioral changes and their basic equation is also taking a downside. It is killing her to live in the same house as Paxton. They start hiding things and resume certain addictive habits that they had given up.
Things take an outlandish turn when Paxton has to deliver a package for a firm whose in charge is Linda. The insanity coerced by the lockdown makes them dwell into a bizarre idea. They plan to pull off a heist so that they could part ways and do what they had always wanted.
A Futile Attempt
Locked Down written by Steven Knight gives us flares of hope but in the end, leaves with utter disappointment. There are times when there is a trigger and you feel that you are going to get something that has an emotional impact. Not only on the emotional front but the narrative adds the humorous or satirical palates to the list of missing flavors.
The performers try to bring the boat to the shore. They play their respective parts with an unfeigned approach. Their performance is organic even when they are walking on potentially dead ground. They try to elevate the notion presented but the writer puts them down almost every time.
The problem of the plot is not that it doesn’t aim to maintain a serious or a philosophical take at events but that it completely misses on what it intended to create. The plot seems so far fetched and made up that one just doesn’t believe what is being shown, even if you are all set to escape realism and be entertained. It neither absorbs your attention nor makes you laugh. It’s a mediocre take on things that becomes directionless after a point of time.
Locked Down streaming on HBO Max, is a light-hearted take on the life of people, in a year that in retrospect would definitely look fictitious. You could surely give it a watch for the enigmatic presence of Anne Hathway or Chiwetel Ejiofor reciting D.H Lawrence on the empty streets of London.
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