Review: Unlocked

Unlocked
Cert: 15 / 98 mins / Dir. Michael Apted / Trailer



I think I was right the other week, it must still be March. Demonstrating that there's still plenty of filler-thriller left on the shelves, Michael Apted's latest offering sees Noomi Rapace lead as a CIA agent working undercover with the UK security forces in anti-terrorism operations, her particular skill being the psychological manipulation of captured enemy operatives to reveal secrets and intel. In the middle of a relatively routine job, she realises that her organisation has been compromised, the clock is ticking and - you've guessed it - she doesn't who just who she can trust…

Leaving aside for one moment the industrial-strength levels of cynicism I'm able to draw upon when considering Unlocked, it's not really that bad a film. It's just desperately searching for a USP, and is so mechanical that our screening had an interval so that Peter O'Brien's screenplay could be wound back up again. The pacing is efficient enough at a standard-issue 98 minutes and with Rapace being joined by the likes of Toni Collette, Orlando Bloom, Michael Douglas and John Malkovich, its casting budget is impressive at least*¹. Speaking of performers, Bloom swaggers through his scenes like a cockney Noel Gallagher, Malkovich acts almost entirely with his ears and Rapace does so with her right eyebrow. Everyone else is firmly on autopilot for dour-faced foot-chases around North London*². By the time Collette breaks out the machine gun semi-ironically, the third-act is in the post as surely as its timer-countdown ending.

While it's clear that there's some dramatic traction to the story being told, the 21st century is a crowded marketplace for the 'Bad Man Has A Bomb™' techno-thriller, and this film has little to sell.

To its credit, Unlocked features three (three) separate product-placement ads for Irn-Bru. It's not even like the thing takes place in Edinburgh, or anything. That's almost as impressive as the time Seabrook crisps rocked up in Fast & Furious.

Almost. But not quite.

This is about 50% Spooks, 50% Bastille Day.
It wishes it was 80% Die Hard, but it's not.



Not unless desaturated huffing and puffing through the streets of London is your thing. This was made for the £3 shelf in Asda, or preferably Netflix.



Oh, probably.



All flippancy and sarcasm aside, it's not.



Nope.



Not that I heard.



Level 1: That Akshay Kumar's in this, and he's in the upcoming Last Jedi movie. He's listed on the IMDB as "First Order Monitor". Going to assume for now that's some command-centre type role, rather than a GFFA 'milk monitor'?





*¹ Although it does feel quite like like Michael Douglas was called in for a couple of days' shooting as a favour here, and John Malkovich similarly booked for a few days there. Each of their scenes feels strangely detached from everything else in the movie. Like that time Morgan Freeman was locked in a broom cupboard to record his bits for London Has Fallen... ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Although our heroes do get a black-cab at one point. As the car pulls up we hear the driver say "That'll be £12.50, please". Given that this is London and the 21st century, I'm left assuming they took a taxi for around the length of one street? ^{[ BACK ]}


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