One of the first, of probably many, pandemic based movie was released onto HBO Max, Locked Down. It was starring Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor, and it is the first movie with a 2021 release date that I have seen. With that said, that makes it the best 2021 movie I have seen, but it was not that great of a movie. The movie was a pandemic take on a rom com, but it also added in the elements of a heist to it as well.
Linda and Paxton have been forced to quarantine together due to the covid pandemic. The problem was that their relationship was no longer strong, and it had been deteriorating for some time. So although they were living in the same house, they were trying to be in each other’s presence as little as possible. Slowly the tension builds within the relationship causing a flow of truths coming from each side, but instead of making things worst, it seems to lessen the tension. Then when Paxton gets his motorcycle out again and begins to seem like his old self, the relationship starts to rekindle. Linda also has started to hate her job due to moral objections, and she teams up with Paxton to steal a diamond that some war lord purchased from her company.
The whole heist element and moral conundrum of the movie was just too much and took away from the story. Also not only did they have to make it a heist, but they also had to make it more moral because they were stealing from a war lord that had too much money anyways and was probably committing human rights violations, so it made the stealing okay. The movie would have been better if it had cut off the last twenty minutes and taken the heist out altogether. The relationship had already almost been repaired by the time they go to the department store to get the diamond; it did not need the extra picnic on the roof to make it acceptable for them to get back together.
Also the whole debate of whether it is okay to steal from a war lord, if they are a crappy person was too serious of a topic for this movie. The conclusion between Linda and Paxton was that it was okay to steal from a war lord because he did not need the money, and he was doing terrible things to the people in his country. This seems like more a serious topic, or at least a topic that could have been fleshed out more, but they used it as a throw out idea that did not really matter. It would have been better off not addressing this issue at all.
When it came to the pandemic element of this movie, the people in the movie were horrendous at mask wearing to the point where it felt almost like the pandemic did not exist in the outside world, it was just used as a reason to keep them home. When they went to the department store, so many of the people were not wearing masks, or they took them off whenever they had the chance to do so. It was another partial committal to an aspect of the movie that either needed to be completely committed to or just to ignore it entirely. Hathaway would put the mask on for a minute, but then once she got close to someone the mask would typically come right off.
Since it was a quarantine movie, this puts a high amount of pressure on the acting and the dialogue between characters. For most of the movie Linda and Paxton were in their house, so the movie was either them talking to each other, or them talking to someone on zoom, at least until the heist at the end. The relationship that Hathaway and Ejiofor created for the movie was done well. They seemed to have good chemistry together as a couple, and the movie worked best when they were having their gripes with one another, but when it got into the zoom business meetings, the movie did not perform as well, but why would anyone want to have an escape and watch a movie only to be faced with a zoom meeting. It also seemed like everyone they zoomed with was having a horrendous time with their spouse, there was no one that was thriving in their new home life world. It was funny that once they had successfully stolen the diamond, and they knew they had the money to do whatever they wanted, they could not go anywhere because everything was closed.
Overall, the movie was fine, it was definitely too long, and the moral lesson they tried to include fell flat, but when Linda and Paxton were the center point of the scene it was an enjoyable movie. If you are a rom com fan then watch it, if not, it is probably not worth your time. I gave the movie a 73, but since it was the first and only 2021 movie, I have seen it does have the top spot, hopefully it will be taken away very soon. There is at least one new movie coming out in the next two weeks on HBO Max and hopefully it will fare better than this one. Also Netflix announced that it will be releasing a new movie every week of the year, so there are bound to be some good ones in there as well.
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