In Locked Down, Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor play the role of a couple going through a crisis, which will surely end up in a divorce, and, to add tension to their lives, they are forced to share their home as the COVID-19 virus is quickly spreading. This tagline could have been the summary of a kitchen sink drama exploring the consequences of a broken relationship; a couple unable to move on with their lives at the same time that the world finds itself stopped and under one of the biggest threats humanity has ever had to face. However, taking into account that the script was written by Steven Knight -who also worked with Hathaway in the ridiculously bonkers Serenity, with Matthew McConaughey- the final result is a romantic comedy in which both protagonists end up planning a heist to steal a £3 million diamond from Harrods.

Efficiently directed by Doug Liman and with a cast that -in addition to Ejiofor and Hathaway- includes cameos of Ben Kingsley, Ben Stiller, Stephen Merchant, Mindy Kaling, Lucy Boynton, Dulé Hill, Mark Gatiss and Claes Bang, Locked Down starts off with the kind of realism that all of us can easily identify; sweatpants, glasses of wine, endless Zoom meetings, Skype calls, people trapped at home wandering around rooms arguing with the people inside them, the inability to go out even for a walk and dangerous trips to the shop to buy valuable commodities such as food, alcohol or toilet paper. However, this relatability starts to vanish as the plot moves forward.

Before saying anything else, it has to be said that, although I am not a fan of Anne Hathaway, I recognize her talent and I am fully aware that she has the chops and charisma to shine in a good film and escape unscathed in a bad one. Too bad this is closer to the latter category than to the former. To put it briefly, her role illustrates the mistakes of the film, in the way that her character -thinly written and nothing new under the sun- does not maintain a level of consistency throughout the film, shifting behaviour without rhyme or reason simply to satisfy the needs of the uneven story. It is a pity that she does not achieve neither believability nor comedic moments (clearly something that can also be said of the film), as she has to share most of her screen time with Ejiofor, who despite not being used to playing comedic roles, manages to be quite solid, funny and relatable enough, serving as the only anchor with reality of the entire film.

Despite having a large cast, most of them are on screen for a few minutes and the majority shooting their scenes from their homes, or in a distant and separated location, allowing the filming process to be safe. There is nothing wrong about this, however, to add a layer of realism to the fact that most of the interactions are had through videocalls, almost all of them seem to have been filmed with the same quality of a Zoom meeting on an old laptop, meaning that there are plenty of badly framed shots and constant apparitions of the cursor on the screen -which made me move my mouse around the desk all the time thinking I was to blame-. However, even taking all of this into consideration, probably the best moments of the film come from Ben Kingsley, whose role seems like an evolution of the character he played in Sexy Beast, although this time he has found solace in faith and has replaced his constant use of curse words with religious references.

This aforementioned loss of realism would not be an issue at all had Locked Down had the character of a proper caper film like anything from the Oceans saga to The Italian Job or Logan Lucky. However, this peppy character and energy is nowhere to be seen in Locked Down. As if it were an unintentional reflection of the lockdown, the film feels slow, repetitive and meanders without purpose to a running time of two hours making you lose interest and check the time to see how much of it there is left, which is a shame, as after all Locked Down is nothing but a harmlessly affable film that is far too messy, long and predictable for its own benefit.