Who doesn’t love a good vigilante movie? There will always be injustice in the world, and we little folks almost always find we have zero control over the rights and wrongs of it all, so it can make for a cathartic viewing experience when a movie allows us to live out the fantasy of real, hands-on justice being served. It can also open up a lot of interesting questions about morality, justice, and the failings of society, and engage us as viewers that much more, because the story is often closer to home than the average action or thriller.
David Yarovesky’s Locked is a pretty terrific slice of vigilante justice that focuses more on personal flaws than avenging any real evil. You can look at it as a headlong collision between Phone Booth and Saw. The everyman is going about his life when, out of the blue, he is swept up in the diabolical scheme of someone unknown to him, someone smart, resourceful, and with way too much time on their hands. Through this ordeal, the vigilante hopes to instill some values in their target, basically torturing them into being better people. These arguably make for the most interesting kind of vigilante movie. As much as you hate to admit it, you can understand both sides of the argument, and there is no clear distinction between hero or villain, giving the movie plenty of room to fully debate its ideas.
What is ‘Locked’ About?

Eddie (Bill Skarsgård) is a petty criminal on the lowest rung of the ladder. He doesn’t have any good connections or physical prowess and only commits these small but noticeable acts of criminality because he sees no other option. We meet him trying to haggle for some repairs to his van, which the mechanic responds to by roughing him up. He just needs enough money to get his ride fixed so he can get back to his delivery job and see his daughter, but he is down on his luck, and as he wanders through city streets riddled with homelessness and poverty, it seems he is not the only one. So when he comes across an expensive-looking SUV, and it happens to be unlocked, he thinks Lady Luck has heard his cries for help, and he goes to commandeer it. But once he’s inside, the doors won’t open again, and no amount of kicking at the windows or wrestling with the controls makes a difference.
Then the car phone starts ringing persistently, the caller ID is listed as Answer Me. He desperately relents, and on the other end of the line is William (Anthony Hopkins), a mild-mannered Welshman who explains that Eddie is the seventh lowlife to play this game, and none of the other six were arrested, if you catch his drift. William has pimped this ride so spectacularly that it is effectively his own personal torture chamber on wheels: the glass is one-way and bulletproof, all the controls from the stereo to the AC are remotely enabled, it’s rigged with booby traps, and it can be operated without a driver. What Eddie hopes will just end with him in handcuffs winds up as a days-long hostage situation, in the middle of a busy city, and nobody knows he’s there or can hear his cries. William sets about psychologically tormenting Eddie with loud yodel music, extreme temperatures, dehydration, and starvation, all in the name of social justice.
‘Locked’ Explores Class, Privilege and Social Divides

William claims to be a doctor who is dying of prostate cancer, and throughout his hard-working life, he has grown jaded by the lack of justice in the legal system. As he sees it, the country is overrun by crime, immorality, and selfishness, while courts and law enforcement have been ‘castrated’ of any power, leaving the good people to be victimized by the bad, with no hope of justice. Eddie counters that the problem with the world is that the rich make the rules for other rich people, and everybody else lives paycheck to paycheck, having to do things to survive that they would never choose to, had they any other option. They debate society and morality back and forth, each sure of their own views because they have lived them, but soon enough, Eddie is willing to acquiesce to pretty much anything just to make it out alive and have the chance to make up for his years of deadbeat parenting.
Of course, for a vigilante movie to really grip us, the person serving up the freshly-baked portions of street justice has to have some tragic backstory or trauma that has caused them to take a stand. John Kramer has his cancer diagnosis, Harry Brown has the murder of his best friend, and William eventually reveals his own traumatic past. At one point, the movie does dance a little too close to an age divide, with William doing the whole “kids today” routine, which actually dilutes his arguments. There are plenty of reasons why a man of his age might feel angered by the state of the world, and feeding into the “OK, boomer” mindset does the story no favors, especially as his character is ultimately the antagonist who must be defeated.

Related

The 12 Best Bill Skarsgård Movies and TV Shows, Ranked

Bill Skarsgård has a wide range of great movies and TV shows.

But for this forgivable little misstep, Locked has a lot to offer. Bill Skarsgård, as ever, knocks it out of the park, making your everyday deadbeat into a sympathetic character who is certainly no angel, but is definitely not deserving of the torture he endures. Anthony Hopkins is similarly reliable, pulling out his tried-and-tested Hannibal Lecter brand of calm, frighteningly clever menace. It all comes together with great pacing, the opening scenes dropping us right into the action, dialing things up when that frantic energy is needed, and reining it back in when the exhaustion hits and the mind-numbing tedium of Eddie’s ordeal really sinks in. There’s some great cinematography from Michael Dallatorre, who is far from limited by the physical confines of the vehicle almost the entire movie takes place in, and David Yarovesky’s direction keeps everything even, through changes of pace, tone and emotion.
Locked is a really slick, tightly-spun crime thriller that seems to take a good deal of inspiration from Joel Schumacher’s Phone Booth. It paints a picture of the big city as a noisy, grimy place that never stops whirring, and attracts characters from both extremes of the social spectrum and everything in between. Somehow, it’s the perfect place to hold someone hostage in plain view, because the rhythm of the city is so relentless that everyone just keeps their heads down and carries on with their own lives, happy to have survived another day.
Locked comes to theaters on March 21.

Locked

‘Phone Booth’ meets ‘Saw’ as Anthony Hopkins teaches Bill Skarsgård to be a better man the hard way.

Release Date

March 21, 2025

Runtime

95 minutes

Writers

Michael Arlen Ross

Pros & Cons

Gripping premise carried by the performances of Skarsgård and Hopkins
Immersive and inventive visual style
Perfectly paced action that doesn’t overstay its welcome

Brief unneccessary pitting of generations against each other