By Tim Estiloz
Sometimes, even our most esteemed and respected actors in Hollywood knowingly take a role in a lousy film simply for the easy paycheck. Making a mortgage payment or something equally mundane financially had to have been the reason that Oscar-winning actor Anthony Hopkins and the wonderfully gifted Bill Skarsgard attached themselves to a quickly monotonous piece of celluloid drivel titled “Locked”.
The beginning premise for “Locked” has potential; but it’s a potential that not only goes unfulfilled, but also it becomes boringly tedious in its drawn out and clumsy execution.
Skarsgard plays Eddie Barrish, a pot-smoking petty criminal who’s so down on his luck, he is reduced to stealing wallets for the sparse loose cash and lottery tickets within. Eddie is such a loser in the criminal game, he hasn’t even got enough cash to pay for the repairs on his broken down van to pick up his young daughter from school. His chronic irresponsibility has repeatedly annoyed and frustrated his estranged wife; who’s tired of Eddie’s unreliable behavior.
In short, Eddie is a mess in all he touches. However, he’s not all bad, as Eddie genuinely loves his forgiving and adoring little girl. He’s just too immature himself to take full responsibility as a father.
So, when Eddie spots a shiny new luxury SUV sitting unlocked in a solitary urban parking lot; this small time crook figures his luck is about change. Eddie enters the vehicle to grab whatever loose items that might be inside; but when he tries to exit, Eddie discovers to his surprise that he’s locked in. Eddie frantically tries to escape by pounding the shatter-proof windows, ripping up the interior panels; and at one point, he desperately fires a pistol at the window, only to have it ricochet off the glass and painfully wound his own leg.
His phone isn’t functional in the vehicle, so he can’t call for help. When a female pedestrian walks up to the window, giving Eddie hope she’ll help him escape; he’s horrified to discover that the car is also sound-proof. She can’t hear his frantic cries for help separated by only inches; because the dark tinted glass is soundproof and all she wants to do is apply her lipstick in the reflection.
Turns out this SUV isn’t a smooth luxury ride. Instead, it’s a leather upholstered cage with power steering and heated seats.
Eventually, an exhausted Eddie is startled when the dashboard console screen lights up and rings with the words “Answer Me”.
Eddie ignores the rings but the caller persists over and over again until Eddie answers in frustration.
The voice at the other end identifies himself as simply William (Anthony Hopkins, quite literally phoning in most of his performance in this film) who explains to Eddie in a silky British tinged accent that he is the car’s owner and that Eddie cannot escape. He says he’s tired of all the crime plaguing the city and his car being broken into six previous times. William says Eddie’s attempted thievery is the last straw and he’s going to have to pay for it by being imprisoned inside his specially built car.
Over the next four days and nights, William psychologically tortures Eddie with incessant pontificating about crime in the city and blasts ear-shattering classical and polka music into the car complete with yodeling. He rations out sparse food and water to the increasingly hungry and thirsty Eddie; torments him with electric shocks in the seats and changes the inside temperature to either freezing cold or sweltering heat. Eddie is driven to such a degree of desperation, fatigue and thirst; he even considers drinking his own urine to survive.
All the while, William watches this cruel mayhem via remote cameras installed inside the car’s interior.
Eddie’s tormentor eventually reveals that he’s dying of cancer and his daughter was recently murdered by street criminals and this torture of Eddie is some form of twisted justice and closure for him. When the two men finally come face to face to experience William’s end game in the last half hour; I had grown weary of the whole tedious exercise.
Hopkins is effective in the earlier portions of this film taking full advantage of his charming British vocal accent to counterbalance the horrible torturous things he does to Eddie throughout the film. His cruelty sounds almost respectable in this performance. But, screenwriter Michael Arlen Ross and director David Yarokvesky transform William; who should be a somewhat sympathetic character given his terminal illness and parental loss, into just a shallow sadist who we end up caring little about one way or the other. When we finally get to the film’s very anti-climatic payoff, we wonder if the entire ride was worth the time invested.
Skargard also comports himself well in his role as a hopeless schmuck in a situation that’s increasingly desperate and in over his head. However, ultimately his ordeal becomes repetitive, sucking away whatever empathy the audience might generate for him as well.
“Locked” is an interesting concept at first; perhaps, as a novel examination of “the haves and the have-nots”or the disparities between the affluent rich vs the urban poor. However, its execution is so plodding and poorly handled, with two such unsympathetic central characters, that it drags its way to a truly unfulfilling finish.
Even at a normally tight 95 minutes; the ending wasn’t soon enough for an audience locked in to endure this tedious film.
Throw away the key on “LOCKED”