While not the first film set during COVID-19, HBO Max’s Locked Down claims the dubious honor of being the worst so far. Sure, there are all the squirm-inducing moments of familiarity that feel overfamiliar when used in a cutesy pandemic film released while the pandemic is still well underway, but much of that distasteful exploitation dissipates when the film dives headfirst into a heist. Right. Let me explain, because the movie barely does. Instead of turning to online ordering and binge-watching, estranged couple Linda (Anne Hathaway) and Paxton (Chiwetel Ejiofor)—who are forced into physical closeness in their London apartment while they’re at their most emotionally distant—turn to that classic stress reliever, diamond theft. If only that stoned, 3 AM premise was as weirdly wild in execution as its surprise announcement promised. Instead, Locked Down is a crushing miscalculation on every level that should’ve stayed locked up.
Unfortunately for all of us, the actual heist part of the film doesn’t start until more than halfway through the film. That means we’ve got an hour to suffer through a very, very strange relationship dramedy. Director Doug Liman’s cheeky thrillers peaked with the razor-sharp Edge of Tomorrow and without those thrills, the chemistry of Mr. & Mrs. Smith or a decent script, his presence is limited, to say the least. That leaves writer Steven Knight, whose last project was the twist-filled good-bad Serenity—a “hypnotically bizarre, bug-eyed nuts, deliciously stupid” movie, according to our critic. Locked Down is like if Serenity somehow polluted the drinking water in Marriage Story, creating an ill, impotent genre mutant.
Paxton and Linda are both in the midst of boring breakdowns. One’s underemployed, the other’s unfulfilled at a corporate job. Their relationship is already kaput, and the only thing that’s new is the lockdown order forcing their disparate depressions into friction. The film’s plot kicks off with the plodding unenthusiasm of its pajama-clad duo (the wardrobe being perhaps the thing Locked Down gets most right about the pandemic) meandering about the home, getting on each other’s nerves in scenes that’re both undershot and overwritten.
A handheld camera in awkward positions (just fit into whatever space is left in the room) films hyper-talky, try-hard cleverness—with the jittery cadence of an insecure stand-up comedian’s patter—as the tone skids wildly all over the road. These serpentine swerves alternate between these desperate, drowning victim grasps at comedy, utter bleakness (Paxton contemplating suicide), the actual concerns of life under COVID (masks and social distancing get brief moments) and infuriating quirkiness like a friendly garden hedgehog, stoned on local poppies; Ejiofor standing in the middle of his street shouting poetry to his “fellow inmates” and a surreally bad seduction. The worst part is, none are quite bad or weird enough to be fun. The couple have nothing simmering under the surface, instead possessing a kind of matching magnetic polarity that resists any attempt to unite them. When they eventually do kiss, you think they’re going to bounce off of each other, repelled by an invisible field.
Hathaway and Ejiofor are erratic with an inconsistent, overcaffeinated energy, rattling off monologues in a play-like atmosphere that’s only a degree or so different than watching a self-indulgent table read on YouTube—only this is for profit, not charity. Hathaway’s messy sellout is a caricature of her excellent turn as Colossal’s alcoholic heart, while Ejiofor’s gluttonous performance has an even bigger appetite for scenery.