Thriller unlocked
> Michael Apted shares the inside story behind his high-octane spy movie and the leading actors who star in it
BAFTA award winner Michael Apted ( The World is Not Enough, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Dawn Treader) is back with spy thriller Unlocked ( top), which stars Noomi Rapace, Orlando Bloom, Michael Douglas, Toni Collette and John Malkovich.
The movie revolves around Alice Racine (Rapace), a one-time top interrogator for the CIA, whose career was sidelined when she failed to ‘unlock’ a prisoner in time to save the lives of dozens of innocent people from a terrorist attack in Paris.
Now leading a quiet life in London, Alice is unexpectedly called back into action when the CIA apprehends a suspect believed to have direct knowledge of another imminent attack.
Alice successfully unlocks the suspect, but before she can fully convey the recovered intelligence to her superiors, she gets a call from her controller at Langley which heightens her suspicions.
Quickly realising she’s been duped, Alice narrowly escapes and now finds herself on the run.
Grasping the fact that the CIA has been deeply compromised, Alice turns to the few people she can trust as she seeks out the responsible parties in a race against the clock to prevent a deadly biological attack on the citizens of London.
In an interview transcript provided by TGV Cinemas, Apted ( far right) explained why he engaged with the script of Unlocked.
“I thought it was a good read, nice story – I like thriller personally,” said Apted. “It has a lot of nice twisting turns, and the possibility to do some interesting casting.
“The emotional core is the woman fighting for herself. A woman is getting her life back – as her artificial life has been destroyed pretty much.
“She’s got to find her feet and she has to get it done (just do it), that is the key to it.”
Describing the movie, Apted said: “That’s the fun of this sort of thriller, you don’t know who’s who, who is doing what to who, who is what they say they are … We are involved with CIA and MI5.
“You don’t know who is the good guy and who’s the bad guy.”
On the subject of Rapace, who plays the multi-faceted Alice around whom the story revolves, Apted said: “It gave Noomi a chance to show not just the action side of her but also the emotional side of her which she is very interested to explore.
“And I was very interested to get it out of her.
“So it wasn’t just about someone coming in and kick some asses – it is about someone who has emotional