Could someone please roll the window down?
If someone locks a thief in their unbreakable car, then they would report that person to the police. Instead, he would torture him by playing loud music, cranking up the AC, and watching him drink his own urine. If he behaves, the owner gives him a water bottle and a cookie. But if he doesn’t, I was hoping he would repeat Al Pacino’s line from “Scent of a Woman,” which is “Intelligence of which you have none.” I would be saying that to anyone wrongfully institutionalized, but that’s a whole other story.
“Locked” has the premise of a thief played by Bill Skarsgard being locked in the car owned by a psychopathic billionaire played by Anthony Hopkins. It’s borrowed from the Argentinian film “4×4,” and produced by Sam Raimi, but it ends up becoming exhausting and claustrophobic for me to be entertained.
You can start with the many production companies that begin the movie, and thus remind me of a “Family Guy” joke. And you can continue with the thief being a lousy father and struggling to make ends meet because his car is in the shop. He can’t make money, if he doesn’t have a car, and if he doesn’t have the money, he can’t get his car back. So what’s a man to do? How about he breaks into an SUV? Bad idea, given the premise.
The Skarsgard thief is named Eddie Barrish, and the Hopkins billionaire is named William. The young man begs for his freedom, even apologizing and making heartwarming speeches, but the old man doesn’t come around. In fact, because he can operate the vehicle from his condo, he can drive the car over other thieves, and even chase Eddie’s little girl Sarah (Ashley Cartwright). I hate when small children end up in danger like this.
“Locked” sure does rain a lot, and I’m not sure if I’m looking at the editing, but let me clarify something. Sometimes, it would rain in the day and night. But in other cases, when one scene looks sunny or calm, the scenes with the car gets rainy. It becomes so repetitive, that it’s hard to tell which weather scenery the film wants to go after. Either the movie thinks the clouds are supposed to target the car for the ambiance or it needs a good car wash from Mother Nature herself. You decide.
Hopkins does a good job playing the villain with his tone and mannerisms, and the SUV does look like a hot vehicle for a psychological thriller like this, but that’s all the praises I can give beyond that. Skarsgard did such a brilliant, haunting job playing the title vampire in “Nosferatu,” but his thief here gets tiresome. Yes, he’s able to figure out a way to turn the tables on the villain, but he mostly makes stupid choices, like trying to shoot the window with his gun. If he can’t kick the windows, what makes him think a gun would be any different? And if a billionaire can wire the seats to shock him, then cursing at him doesn’t help.
How would a person survive in a situation like this? Drink the given water bottle fast, devour the cookie in one blow, and urine and drink from that very same bottle. But I’m not a car thief, and I don’t mess with people like William, so what do I know?
There’s a lot going for in this genre, especially the star power of the two leads, but I still felt it was a bit too much, and left me more annoyed and exhausted than exhilarated.