"Being locked up is making it worse."
Welcome to January Movies! Today we have...a crime comedy written by someone with a bad track history and all the big stars who need new agents!
Locked Down follows a couple that attempts a high-risk, high-stakes jewelry heist at a department store during the lockdown due to covid-19. I'm pretty sure the trailer came out maybe a week before this was released on HBO Max. Doug Liman has made some good movies in the past so there was a chance for this. Unfortunately, Steven Knight wrote this and has only written one good movie, that being Locke, and his latest being the train wreck that is Serenity (2019). Maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but this is a January movie so I'm just gonna say it how it is. This is exactly what I thought it would be and I'm fine with that. Most of the issues come from the writing. Surprisingly I did like the writing at the beginning. There was some clever dialogue concerning covid-19 and how it has affected jobs and mental health. Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor give fine performances. Their monologues were performed well and they worked nicely together. But soon enough, the writing fails. Nothing happens until the last 30 minutes, I'm not joking. The beginning had me interested because I thought that would be a small portion. Then it continues to lecture us on stuff we already know for about an hour before even getting to the thought of a heist movie. Then for another 30 minutes they discuss the heist stuff, but I already lost interest. When the heist takes place, I didn't even know it had started because I was sitting on my phone. I will say that it's entertaining then, but it's only 30 minutes of a basic heist. This two hour movie could've cut at the very least 30 minutes because I gained nothing other than being bored.
Doug Liman had a few moments of good directing. He just couldn't find a way to keep the audience engaged in the middle. Maybe this was trying for a realistic approach, but people don't want to see the boring parts that we forget about. There are so many cameos thrown throughout for us to point at the screen and say "Wow! That's someone famous!" But it feels almost exhausting seeing that many cameos. It feels like this was the movie that people decided to do to finish a contract. Anne Hathaway has faded pretty quick which is sad. She's a great actress and give a good performance almost every time. The movies just fail to draw in an audience or a positive review. In the end, this is a basic attempt at a comedy heist movie. With a few good moments and good lead performance, I found myself entertained from time to time, but I won't remember this in a year and I don't think anyone else will.
