Unlocked
Director: Michael Apted
Year:
2017
Rating: 6.0
It was nearly twenty years between the two spy films from director Michael
Apted. This one in 2017 and then back in 1998 he directed the Pierce Brosnan
James Bond film The World is Not Enough, that no one call really recall until
you say it was the one with Denise Richards as a nuclear scientist. Even back
then Apted seemed an odd choice to direct a big action spy film of the greatest
franchise in film history. He had made some solid films back in the 1980's
with Coal Miner's Daughter, Gorky Park and Gorillas in the Mist - but he
is primarily famous for his "Up" series of documentary films in which he
has checked in on the lives of a group of 14 people every seven years since
they were seven years old in 1964 (not seen any of them myself). Kind of
an amazing accomplishment but not necessarily what you look for in directing
a spy film.
His Bond film clearly had a much larger budget than this one does and what
Unlocked has goes to an amazing cast of actors that would make any film proud
- Michael Douglas, John Malkovich, Orlando Bloom, Toni Collette and Noomi
Rapace. As I was watching it, I thought what a wonderful cast for a TV movie
- how did they afford it - but it turns out that this was a theatrical film
that sank like a Mafia stool pigeon with his feet in cement.
The bar has been raised so much for theatrical spy films with the Bond and
Mission Impossible franchises that a spy film without the requisite budget
and action set pieces has no chance. This is a solid decent spy film but it
has no flash, no pizzazz - it kind of just sits there visually and is loaded
down with a script that would have felt a lot fresher 40 years ago. It has
the twists, turns and double crosses that one expects but you have to be
recently out of a Buddhist cave chanting mantras for the past few decades
not to see most of them coming.
But for me it was still worth my time because of Noomi Rapace. I became
a fan with hers with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy (and discovered
that there was also a Swedish TV series of her character) and I am glad to
see her starring in some films outside of Sweden. Not by any means a classical
film beauty, she brings an intense smart capable tough attitude to her acting
that works well in a film like this.
Here she plays a CIA agent who has gone into semi-retirement after an operation
went wrong in Paris and a number of civilians were killed. Her expertise is
as an interrogator - no, not like the ones in the Black Sites - but who has
a unique ability to draw out her subject. When the CIA suspects that a biological
attack on London is imminent, she is pulled back into the field to question
a messenger. Not too surprisingly in these times, Muslim terrorists are behind
it. But little is as it seems and she has to go it alone to stop it. So yes,
we have seen it all before but having a woman take on that role is still
unusual (though becoming less so) and she is quite good - good enough that
I would like to see her character come back but that seems unlikely.
