Remember the 2013 movie LOCKE starring Tom Hardy? It’s not a thriller, it’s a drama, but the gimmick is that the whole thing is Hardy driving to a hospital and making phone calls trying to straighten out a huge mess he’s made for himself and others. In my review I joked about it being the start of a franchise, but I assumed they’d have titles like LOCKE: OVERDRIVE and be about Locke making other phone calls on other drives. I didn’t know they’d just add an extra letter to the title and have a different chameleonic actor playing a different character alone in a car talking on the phone for a different reason.
Okay yeah maybe technically and legally speaking LOCKED is not a sequel to LOCKE, it’s just the Sam-Raimi-produced American remake of the 2019 Argentine movie 4×4*. It stars Pennywise/The Crow/the boy who killed the world/younger brother of Tarzan/the Northman himself Mr. Bill Skarsgård, looking like Pete Davidson with his bleached hair, tattoos, pink pullover hoodie under a jacket and vape pen. I think he filmed this right after NOSFERATU, so I bet being locked in a car didn’t seem that bad compared to doing six hours of makeup in the morning and Mongolian throat singing between takes. It probly felt like a vacation. I wonder if transitioning out of his Orlok era is also the reason his accent is less consistent here than usual. Early on I wondered if he was not playing American this time, but he settles in after a bit.
Anyway he plays Eddie Barrish, a real fuckup. Eddie’s baby mama (Gabrielle Walsh, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE MARKED ONES) is on his ass about failing to pick up his daughter Sarah (Ashley Cartwright, A GODWINK CHRISTMAS: MIRACLE OF LOVE) but he’s helpless because he can’t get his van back from the garage because he doesn’t have the money he owes and he can’t get the money because he can’t make deliveries without the van. Not that he’s averse to dishonest work. When, in desperation, he steals a wallet and starts trying the door handles on parked cars it sure doesn’t seem like a first for him. But he’s nice enough to share his bottle of water with a dog locked in one of the cars – a “save the cat” moment that’s also foreshadowing. (read the rest of this shit…)
Wow, Takashi Miike’s got another great samurai remake under his belt, and this time as far as I’ve heard he didn’t even have to cut out a demon-rape scene to make it classy. Like 13 ASSASSINS it’s got a strong mood and great story built upon the great structure (I’m told) of the original (Masaki Kobayashi’s HARAKIRI [1962]). A word of warning, though: this one is not the action spectacular that 13 A’S is. It’s closer to the classical tradition where it’s a drama about castes, codes, corruption and conflict, and eventually you know they’re gonna pull out the swords, but that’s the cherry on top, not the actual ice cream.
THE ITALIAN JOB circa 2003 is a standard issue studio ensemble heist movie, and a really enjoyable one. The director of FRIDAY and the writers of DEEP BLUE SEA put together a good group of likable actors to play the team of expert thieves, they came up with some clever gimmicks for an elaborate heist, and they executed it well with good pacing, light humor, a sense of fun but also a reasonable enough sense of danger. So it’s closer to OCEAN’S 11 where they obviously know what they’re doing but have to put in some elbow grease than OCEAN’S PART 13 where they seem to have super powers and can do absolutely anything at a moment’s notice with no trouble at all. 
