The Poppies of Terra #52 - Wild Ride Unlocked

The Latin word “dolus” translates to trickery or deception, and in a legal context denotes intentional wrongdoing. In Locked, the new, claustrophobic, single-setting, multi-location thriller starring Bill Skarsgård and Anthony Hopkins, Dolus is the name of a fictional high-tech car brand, and there is truth in advertising. William (Hopkins), an old man who has endured horrific tragedy and has little left to lose due to a cancer prognosis, has rigged his fancy SUV into a trap, clearly intending to do wrong to whoever ends up inside it. That would be Eddie Barrish (Skarsgård), a petty criminal and negligent father who loves his daughter almost as much as breaking his commitments to her. On a particularly desperate day, trying to come up with the cash to get the alternator on his van fixed, Eddie starts checking car doors, and thus discovers the entrance to an Aladdin’s cave not of bounty but mental and physical torment.

Before and after breaking into the pristine black SUV, the film goes out of its way to show that Eddie has layers. He is manipulative and he steals a wallet, but he’s also genuinely hopeful when he scratches lottery tickets and remorseful when he speaks to his daughter on the phone. After being startled by a barking dog inside one of the vehicles he tries to hijack, he empathizes with its distress and gives the canine some of his food and water. He has angry tattoos, but speaks about morality and conscience by referencing Dostoevsky; he cusses constantly, but picks up on subtle literary cues from William. The screenplay sets them up as kidnapper and prisoner, torturer and victim, and at one point William dismisses Eddie’s attempt to find a commonality between them–they’ve both been let down by the system in different ways–by joking that they both breathe oxygen and will both die, but the truth is that they are alike in having compromised their morals. They’re both ill-adapted to their environments, trying to claw their way to meaning.

William’s character seems like an older version of that played by Michael Douglas in Falling Down (1993), who was also named, perhaps not coincidentally, William. He’s worked hard but in the end life has taken everything of value from him. The fact that his car has been broken into half a dozen times, and the police have been useless, seems to have been the final straw causing him to snap. Hopkins embodies, mostly through his powerful voice acting over the car’s phone, a similar hurt and rage to Russell Crowe’s Tom Cooper in Unhinged (2020), another film involving vehicular sadism, but dressed up with more manners, culture and a looney jocularity. Eddie, meanwhile, has convinced himself that, since the system is rigged against people like him, he has no choice but to be a hard-nosed pragmatist and do whatever it takes to survive.

Much of the film focuses on the mechanics of Eddie’s entrapment in the steel-plated, bulletproof, shatterproof, soundproof, network-proof electric tomb on wheels. This alternately recalls films like Buried (2010) and 127 Hours (2010). Like in fare of that ilk, food and water soon become matters of urgency, and all manner of physical sensations are heightened, evoking titles like Oxygen (2021), Fall (2022) and Nowhere (2023). The basic dramatic irony of criminals stumbling into a situation far worse than they could have imagined recalls outings like Don’t Breathe (2016) and more recently the one-man show starring Willem Dafoe, Inside (2023). Locked bears some situational resemblance with the also recent, pun intended, Liam Neeson vehicle Retribution (2023), but the setup was anticipated long before, in the direct-to-video Captured (1998). A remote voice manipulating the protagonist’s actions, bending them against their will, evokes, among others, Speed (1994) and Phone Booth (2002). 

The greatest truth in William’s comments pertains to times in life where it’s impossible to go back and completely heal from certain losses, but the film is happy to settle for these broad emotional strokes rather than developing complex interiorities. It’s more interested in the viscera of survivalism than the angst of existentialism. As a remake of 4x4 (2019), directed by Mariano Cohn, Locked is an efficient pop machine with loud action, flashy effects and vigorous directing (including 360-shots within the SUV) at the hands of David Yarovesky. The logistics and driving sequences often defy believability. Perhaps the most fantastical leap is the idea that a car like that would sit in that public parking lot for that many days without incurring multiple citations or, on the flip side, several more attempted burglaries. Reality notwithstanding, the editorial team, along with composer Timothy Williams, know how to ramp up the action when the movie needs extra umph for its vroom vroom. Perhaps not surprisingly, the whole affair only works as well as it does because of the dedication of Hopkins and Skarsgård. Hopkins is less Hannibal Lecter here than he is Ted Crawford from Fracture (2007), with a note or two of disarming kookiness keeping us off-kilter. Mmmm, gummy bears.

I imagine viewers may have conflicted opinions about the script’s flirtations with opposing viewpoints on classism, ageism, conservatism vs liberalism, trauma vs empowerment, and so on. I think those causes are all body paint, really, with a more retrograde chassis lying beneath: a straightforward critique of man’s imprisonment by uncaring, mechanical systems, allegorized by a cutting-edge version of death on wheels. I see it as a modern take on Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle, which deals with the dehumanizing effects of capitalism and the degradation of human dignity, spiced up with genre thrills. Jaclyn Kenney, the movie’s art director, hammers home the idea of urban decay and widespread malaise. Like in the famous song by Guns N’ Roses, the jungle brings both characters down to their knees. 

Despite their vast differences in education, profession, economic status, age, and affect, Eddie and William are both fated to share the same interior of a machine bound for pain, trapped inside a mobile jail that promises comfort and automation while delivering agony and stealing agency. Unlike, say, the enigmatic, relentless external enemies powering Steven Spielberg’s Duel (1971) and Jaws (1975), Locked’s main villain is the pressure cooker of a complicated world. And yet the film’s stance is ultimately not fatalistic, bowing instead to the commercial formula of a hopeful, happy ending. Everyone gets exactly what they need.