It’s impossible to describe the past year because we’re still in it. We cannot see the forest from the trees. To say, “Man, lockdown was crazy,” is a mind-boggling statement because the craziness has never really ended. We may not be at the onset of this crisis, but we’re still living through it, and while we’re not in an all-out lockdown like we were before, we’re also not exactly out of the woods as much as individuals have decided to go at it depending on their own comfort level/recklessness and how successful their country has been at combating COVID-19. So to release a movie called Locked Down about the lockdown when we’re less than a year from the start of lockdown, and then make it a combination between a character-driven romantic drama and an outlandish heist picture is disorienting. And if that sense of disorientation is what director Doug Liman and screenwriter Steven Knight were going for, then they have certainly succeeded.

After ten years together, Paxton (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Linda’s (Anne Hathaway) relationship is pretty much at its end. They got together when they were young and rebellious, but Paxton has now become neurotic while Linda is now a corporate executive who can’t stand the heartless acts she has to do for her job. However, they can’t split up because the U.K. has gone into lockdown due to COVID. As their relationship becomes further strained, Paxton gets an off-the-books job to transport valuable cargo out of department stores trying to protect their inventor during the lockdown. It just so happens that part of that cargo belongs to Linda’s company, and among that cargo is a $3 million diamond. No one at Linda’s company knows that she and Paxton are an item, so the two conspire to steal the diamond, which in turn brings them closer together.

Anne Hathaway in Locked Down
Image via HBO Max

In some ways, Locked Down does not feel like a real movie. Obviously, it was filmed during COVID using COVID precautions, and it uses an odd mixture of professional footage combined with Zoom calls for pretty much any other major supporting character (Ben Kingsley, Mindy Kaling, Dulé Hill, and others are “in” this insofar as they did some Zoom calls). But most of the action is confined to Linda and Paxton’s home (again, not surprising), so the stripped down, simple aspect almost gives Locked Down the feeling of a student film that happens to star famous people from the director of Edge of Tomorrow.

This is just one aspect that continually keeps the viewer off-balance, and I’m going to give the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt and assume that this disorientation was part of the point. Think back to where we were in March and April 2020, and we started to lose track of the days (Vox even had a running article, “What day is it today?”). Our lives were seriously disrupted, bonds were severed, and yet Locked Down is a movie all about trying to repair a damaged bond. Into this mixture Knight gives Paxton and Linda long monologues where they talk about procuring cigarettes or how they feel about each other or what’s happened to their lives. And then all of a sudden there will be a broad comic beat like Stephen Merchant riffing about how life in a department store is different than life on a ship.

Chiwetel Ejiofor in Locked Down
Image via HBO Max

Given that this is an HBO Max release, I doubt many people will sit through Locked Down to see where it’s going because the heist element doesn’t really appear until halfway through the movie. Up to that point, it’s more of a relationship drama, and while Ejiofor and Hathaway deliver typically strong performances, the tone of the film is all of the place, which is grating at first, and then you’re kind of reminded of that disorientation you first experienced at the start of lockdown and the approach makes more sense in its nonsensical way. The film provides catharsis not by dealing with lockdown as much as offering the simple pleasures of heist movie with its structures, plans, and payoffs—all things we’ve been denied from COVID upending the world.

And yet the COVID of it all does strike a bitter note. The deadly disease that has killed almost two million people worldwide is kind of an afterthought in Locked Down, as if we locked down from some nebulous threat instead of a horrible illness. There are nods towards the National Health Service and the importance of wearing masks, but between its relationship drama and heist movie, there’s not much room for Locked Down to acknowledge the cost of this disease in terms of mass deaths and no space to grieve given social distancing requirements. Locked Down is about a longing to return to stability after tumult, but it wishes to keep the tumult outside its window. To try and separate lockdown from the deadly virus that caused the lockdown feels like a case of trying to eat your cake and have it too.

Despite these missteps, I have a begrudging admiration for Locked Down. We’re all trying to make sense of a world ravaged by COVID, and the first movies out the gate to reckon with any kind of upheaval will always be uneven at best. That’s probably Locked Down’s biggest hurdle: it’s trying to look back at something we’re still in, and it’s not entirely sure what to make of it other than a longing to get back to something that makes sense. I admire the sentiment of Locked Down even if I’m ambivalent about its methods.

Rating: B-

Locked Down poster