As the back half of tonight's High Concept Double Feature (ooooh-ooooh-ooooh) which began with Drop we watched a movie I'd never heard of despite its cast until it popped up on the high seas, the taut 1-1/2-hander Locked.
Bill Skarsgård (IT, the terrible remake of The Crow) stars as Eddie Barrish, a scuzzy lowlife and deadbeat dad who we meet trying to get his van from the mechanic's, but he's as with most things in his life, he's short on what he owes. While walking around the rundown parts of his city, looking for things to steal, he happens upon an unlocked luxury SUV in parking lot. After climbing in and rummaging around, he discovers he can't get out as the doors are locked. Ruh-roh.
The entertainment system's phone rings and after realizing that ignoring it isn't an option, he answers and makes the acquaintance of the vehicle's owner, William (two-time Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins?!?), who informs Eddie that this is a very special car with armored panels, soundproofing, and bulletproof glass which proves itself when Eddie tries to shoot it and the bullet ricochets into his leg. There are hidden cameras, electric prods which can shock him if he swears or annoys William and the climate control can be cranked up to sweltering heat & bone-chilling cold. And the stereo can play yodeling music at deafening volume.
After passing out from his wounds, Eddie wakes up to find them bandaged. Turns out William is a doctor and isn't about to let his captive escape this bizarre form of honey trap justice that easily. Over several days, this standoff proceeds as William explains why he's doing this while Eddie tries to negotiate his way out so he can see his daughter again.
A remake of a 2019 Argentinian film called 4x4 the direction by David Yarovesky (2019's Brightburn, the "what if Superman was a pyscho kid" flick produced by James Gunn) manages to keep the story exciting despite the literal bottle episode nature of the setting. (It's reminiscent of Joel Schumacher's Phone Booth where Colin Ferrel was stuck in a you know on the phone with Keifer Sutherland.)
I'd really like to see a making-of feature about how they executed some of the shots like an early lengthy one where the camera keeps orbiting around Eddie as he tries to find a way out of the car and it occurred to me that the camera had to be outside the bounds of the car's interior. (It's similar to this scene from Spielberg's War of the Worlds.)
While Skarsgård seems to be in every movie Pedro Pascal isn't in, he does a good job with his unsympathetic character as he makes clear that he may be a lowlife, he's not a monster. It seems odd that Hopkins would seem to be slumming in a mostly voiceover role, but he still shows up to play and classes up the joint.
While the ending was a bit anticlimactic, overall Locked is a solid chamber thriller that manages to properly fill its 95-minute runtime.
Score: 7/10. Catch it on cable/streaming.
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