Locked Down (2021)

Written by Manuel São Bento on January 23, 2021

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Watching a film set during a global pandemic while actually going through a global pandemic can have a significant negative impact on the viewer, depending on how the latter feels about the real-life problem. Honestly, my expectations were pretty low, but Locked Down is one of the most pleasant surprises I've had the luck of coming across in the last few months.

Steven Knight's screenplay is humorously clever, packed with jokes about humanity's silliest behaviors during a lockdown. From the ridiculously amount of toilet paper rolls to the arguing about the most irrelevant, unimportant things at home, Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor deeply elevate a simple yet entertaining narrative with two incredibly amusing performances. Their chemistry is on-point, and their characters are equally funny.

Doug Liman crafted a two-hour enjoyable, inoffensive, mostly realistic story of a couple in need of finding what made them fall in love... at least until the beginning of the utterly absurd third act. Yes, the whole movie follows a generic formula filled with cliches, but the last half an hour switches to a ridiculous heist mission that doesn't really connect with the characters or the story until that point (besides the dozens of logical issues it raises).

Overall, I recommend it to anyone who has a couple of extra hours to watch something light on TV, but if you genuinely want to escape or forget about the current global situation, then maybe it's better to save this one for another time.

Rating: B-