BEFORE: Ben Kingsley carries over from "Operation Finale". I know, you'd think that if I had a choice between this film and "Shang-Chi", naturally I should gravitate toward the Marvel movie and watch that one instead, except I have a few reasons. #1 is Awkwafina, I think I've been pretty open about the fact that I just don't think she can act, and that makes every movie she's in worse. Secondly, I've already figured out that I can link to "Shang-Chi" in January from the new "Spider-Man" movie, so right now, that's the plan.
But also, from what I've heard, this is a pandemic-themed movie, and there just aren't many of those, not yet. There are outbreak movies and apocalyptic zombie-virus movies, but very few movies made ABOUT the pandemic, also made DURING the pandemic. The only other one that I know of is an animated film that I worked on, currently working its way through the Oscar eligibility process, and I'm helping all I can with that. I feel close to this one because I had a small hand in the production - I came up with the title, "Demi's Panic", which is a loose anagram for the word "pandemics" (OK, so it's got an extra "i" in there, so sue me.). I thought this might subtly convey the pandemic without coming right out and saying it, like, oh, I don't know, "Locked Down". ("Locked Down" might have been one of my 50 or so title suggestions, I don't remember.).
Anyway, that animated short is all about what a young Latina woman working in NY goes through during the early days of the pandemic, when everybody was on edge and unsure what to do, how to protect themselves, how to start working from home and avoid other people, and mourn the loss of a loved one, and what all that does to her mental state. We had a week-long qualifying screening in San Francisco in October, and then I filled out all of the Oscars paperwork (and there's quite a bit) so now we're hoping the film makes the "short list" of 15 films, and the short films branch votes on this in about a week. Now I'm dealing with getting an ad approved that we're going to e-mail out to the branch voters. We can't do this ourselves, we have to hire one of three approved companies to do this. So the fun continues...
THE PLOT: A couple attempts a high-risk, high-stakes jewelry heist at a department store.
AFTER: Before I close the book on 2021, which I can't wait to do, let's get the damn pandemic out of the way, and honestly I want nothing more for it to be over, and then we can never speak of it again. Only that's just not the way it's going to work - much like Sept. 11, 2001, the whole COVID-19 thing has changed us all, in ways that we couldn't have anticipated. Jobs are different, relationships are different, how we think about our own health is different, politics are different (though they never should have been involved in the first place) and we can't go back. We may WANT to go back to the before-times, but we can't and we shouldn't. As Quiet Riot said, "Well, now you're here, there's no way back."
Filmmaking is going to be different, too, though I don't think we've really seen the full effects yet, because like everything else, filmmaking was slowed down or shut down for months. I imagine that studios were clearing old films off of their shelves for release, but the theaters weren't even open, so everything just got dumped to streaming there for a while, maybe after limited releases. (The Oscars are different, too, they're still letting streaming films qualify, this year because theaters were shut down for months and months.). And then when filmmaking and TV production finally resumed, there were new rules, much testing, and a lot of mini-shutdowns whenever an actor tested positive. Talk shows had no live audiences, so actors were promoting their projects via Zoom calls, and we only JUST got talk shows and Broadway performances back a couple months ago.
Like nearly everyone else, my life got upended in several ways. I lost one job, but took on two new ones this year (not at the same time) and got back into film exhibition, not just production. As a result of that, I started working odd hours, learned some new tasks, and met new co-workers and some friends along that new path. My marriage is still solid, but that also feels like it might have changed or mutated along the way. We've been together a long time, but quarantining at home is a very intense form of together, I see that now. In the before-times we both had jobs outside of home, where we both spent the better part of our time, then we'd reconnect on the weekends, dine out on Friday night or take little road trips to Atlantic City a few times a year. All of that went away as of April 2020, we couldn't go anywhere, and even if we could, there was no place to GO. Restaurants closed, airlines nearly shut down, all vacation plans on hold - we had a Florida trip planned for late April 2020, and it just didn't happen. We got credit for those flights we didn't take, and cashed the credit in for a trip to Chicago in June 2021, I don't think we'd go to (ugh) Florida now even if you paid us to.
This film "Locked Down" kind of gets all of that, man - we meet Paxton and Linda in the early days of the pandemic, they're still living together but no longer functioning as a couple. It's not just the pandemic, they refer to some "Christmas incident", so apparently their relationship's been on life support for some time, just maybe neither one was willing to pull the trigger and split, and now it's too late, because the U.K. is under lockdown and they're forced to quarantine together. I'm sure this happened to somebody out there, but I have a feeling that maybe once you know it's over and you realize it's unhealthy to keep living together, you may do whatever it takes to get out, even rent another apartment a block away, just to get some peace of mind. I heard about people starting relationships a few weeks before lockdown and then quickly deciding to move in together, so you have to figure at least some of those people regretted that decision in short order, right?
Thankfully, it's a big flat, like several stories, so they can maintain separate bedrooms as they make plans to separate as soon as the lockdown order is lifted. They're still cordial to each other, at least for a while, before the tensions of their incarceration sink in, and the quirks of their roommate, which maybe they once found endearing, are suddenly quite annoying. Paxton wants to try his hand at baking bread, but Linda begs him not to. (My wife took up baking, too, but she did so before the pandemic hit - and I pledged to eat all her mistakes, because that's the kind of guy I am.). Paxton wants to sell his motorcycle, because there's no place to drive to, but Linda secretly is the buyer, and she wants to give it back to him as a parting gift, if they ever get around to actually parting.
This is textbook relationship stuff, of a sort - when they first get together, romantic partners recognize all the things they have in common, but when they're ready to separate, they highlight all of their differences. Or maybe realizing their differences leads to the separation, it's tough to say - but the long-lasting romantic partners tend to reach this sort of equilibrium of understanding, where they share certain things, and celebrate those things, but also realize that they're two different people in other ways, and have learned to accept this as well. It's notable that Linda is a CEO of a tech/entertainment/promotions (?) company, and has never told one co-worker that she's in a relationship. Paxton is a lorry (van) driver, who's having trouble getting promoted because of a past criminal record - so all of the reasons why Linda is keeping her relationship secret seem to be tied to race or class or both, and that's sort of not OK. This kind of makes her a horrible person, and even if she's aware of this, it still doesn't excuse it.
BUT, this is something of a plot point, because the shutdown forces London's department stores to close, and even though shopping is at a standstill, there's a ton of merchandise that needs to be moved into storage. Promotional companies that have displays need to remove them, and since Linda used to work at Harrod's, and has just been forced to lay off most of her staff, it's up to her as CEO to get the valuable jewelry being displayed in the store safely transported out. Meanwhile, there's a call for available truck drivers to transport all this stuff to the airport, and Paxton's boss needs drivers with clean records, so he offers Paxton work, under an assumed name, to help clear out several stores.
YES, it is a major, major coincidence that Linda needs to have valuable merchandise removed from Harrod's, and that her former romantic partner and still current roommate would be assigned as her van driver under another name. But that's what sparks the plot here, Linda realizes that the diamond on loan to them needs to be shipped to storage, that its new owner is a horrible horrible dictator, and that there's also a replica diamond in the display that could easily be switched out for the real one, without anyone realizing it for months. There are several NITPICK POINTS here for sure, such as if they had a replica diamond to put on display, why did the real one need to be in the store at all? It could have stayed in a vault somewhere and the Harrod's customers would never have known the difference.
Also, someone in Paxton's company, someone who hates him, has given him a fake name that's the same as a famous author. Paxton's sure this will blow his cover, because every guard who checks it's going to realize it's a phony name. Hmm, OK, but N.P. 2, there are all kinds of people who share their name with famous people, past or present - it's not unheard of. There are billions of people in this world, so chances are you can probably find another George Clooney or another Richard Nixon or another Alfred Hitchcock somewhere in the world. How many George Washingtons are there, alive, right now? Probably a bunch of them. So a name on a fake I.D. isn't automatically suspicious, JUST because it's also the name of a famous person.
Paxton and Linda spend a fair amount of time debating whether stealing a diamond is OK - perhaps too much time debating it. You may find yourself screaming at the screen here, like come on, either steal the diamond or don't steal the diamond, just, please, stop trying to justify it. They want to give 1/3 of the value to the National Health Service, which is admirable, especially during a pandemic, but you can't really erase a bad thing just by doing a different good thing, that's not how karma works. What they should be thinking about is whether stealing a diamond together is going to put enough spark back into their relationship to consider staying together a little longer. Who's to say? Maybe they both got boring together, and that's why they're both bored, and this could change their lives' course. Maybe not, but isn't that worth a shot?
Before their opportunity to steal the diamond, the couple takes a walk through Harrod's food court, helping themselves to expensive caviar, champagne, truffles and other costly items, essentially creating the world's most valuable rooftop picnic. Linda points out that the items are all going to be donated to food pantries - so now they're not stealing from the rich, they're stealing food from the poor. This is probably a narrative mistake, because I liked them a little less after this.
Still, the film was made during London's COVID restrictions, and shot in only 18 days, so perhaps some concessions need to be made. The film made extensive use of Zoom calls, actor's playing Linda's co-workers and Paxton's half-brother and sister-in-law thus could dial in from anywhere. The drive to continue to make movies, even under near-impossible conditions, prevailed over any difficulties, so I'm inclined to be a little lenient in my scoring tonight. They got some of the pandemic details right, even though they seem wrong - but that's the way things were in the early days of 2020, we all got masks wrong at the start. Remember at first they told us that we needed to wear masks outside, but we could take them off once we got home? Yeah, that was almost 100% backwards, it's inside where the virus is much more transmissible, and out in the fresh air, the chance of catching COVID is greatly reduced. So we should have been wearing masks INSIDE from the start, and outside the danger was never really that great, unless someone was right up in your face. Live and learn, I guess.
Also starring Anne Hathaway (last seen in "Becoming Jane"), Chiwetel Ejiofor (last seen in "The Old Guard"), Stephen Merchant (last seen in "Hall Pass"), Mindy Kaling (last seen in "Late Night"), Lucy Boynton (last seen in "Bohemian Rhapsody"), Dulé Hill (last seen in "Holes"), Jazmyn Simon, Ben Stiller (last seen in "Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny"), Mark Gatiss (last seen in "Birthday Girl"), Claes Bang (last seen in "The Burnt Orange Heresy"), Sam Spruell (last seen in "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets"), Frances Ruffelle, Katie Leung (last seen in "T2 Trainspotting"), Bobby Schofield (last seen in "The Catcher Was a Spy"), Tallulah Grieve, Dan Ball, Eva Röse, Shereen Gray, Marek Larwood, Anna Behne, Andreas Grant, Alexandra Reimer-Duffy
RATING: 6 out of 10 banging saucepans
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