LOCKED DOWN
LOCKED DOWN I How Doug Liman made a star-studded heist movie in the middle of a global pandemic.
How to make an A-list flick in 18 days. Mid-pandemic.
One of the first films conceived, scripted, shot and soon to be released in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, Locked Down is a film inextricably intertwined with our current moment. “Part of the energy you feel in Locked Down is that Boris Johnson was shutting London down around us while we were shooting,” Liman tells Teasers from a farmhouse just outside the capital where, appropriately enough, he’s been in lockdown since the start of the pandemic. “I didn’t know if we would be able to finish the movie.”
Shot in just 18 days – partly because filming could be closed down at any moment due to a virus they had no control over, and partly because Liman shot his ’96 classic Swingers in precisely the same amount of time – Locked Down stars Anne Hathaway as Linda, and Chiwetel Ejiofor as Paxton. They’re a couple on the brink of a breakup when a national lockdown forces them to spend the next two weeks under the same roof. Adding to the tension is the fact that Linda loathes her highpowered job at an amoral jewellery conglomerate that caters to the rich and rotten, while Paxton has lost any sense of purpose after being put on furlough as a delivery driver.
For Liman, who’s largely worked in the blockbuster space since The Bourne Identity put him on the action-movie map, Locked Down was an opportunity to return to his filmmaking roots. “It was a way for me to do the character work I love,” says the director, who started his career with Swingers and Go. “I’m not interested in people sitting around examining their bellybuttons, but I am interested in a high concept, like what happens to a couple that’s
decided to break up but is forced to quarantine together? I love The Odd Couple. I love Mr. & Mrs. Smith. I love seeing two people trying to work out their relationship under pressure.”
Pressure permeated every aspect of the Locked Down production. Writer Steven Knight, for example, had penned just 50 of the script’s 180 pages at the point it was sent to Hathaway and Ejiofor. “The normal circumstance is that they would want to see a whole script. I was like, ‘These are not normal circumstances, and we’re going to start shooting in a couple of weeks,’” Liman laughs. Hathaway and Ejiofor “jumped in without even hesitating” - an enthusiasm they brought to set every day, according to Liman. “You see it on the screen in their performances. There’s an attitude of, ‘Let’s just do this. Let’s attempt the impossible.’”
But Locked Down isn’t simply a cramped Covid rom-com. After Paxton and Linda realise they have the opportunity to steal a £3 million diamond from Harrods, the film reconfigures itself into an amateur-heist movie. “We had started out with an idea of doing a heist,” Liman recalls of his earliest discussions with Knight. But instead of an elaborate Ocean’s-esque robbery with multiple moving parts and ticking clocks, Locked Down’s heist is less about ‘can they?’ than ‘will they?’
“I’ve never seen a heist film where the A-storyline, the dominant pressure of the third act, is, ‘Will these two regular people take this giant leap and do this outrageous thing that will change their lives, or not?’” Liman says. Harrods, much like his cast, committed to the film without seeing a complete script, following only a single Zoom call with the filmmakers. No one was more surprised by this than Liman himself, who admits that if Harrods had turned them down “there was no point in doing the story”. Given the opportunity to shoot at the worldfamous department store over six consecutive nights while it was closed to the public, Liman found it just as liberating as his characters to escape the four walls of Linda and Paxton’s home.
“Most of the movie is set in this house, so I was literally locked down with the crew and my actors, until we got to Harrods, which we shot at the end,” Liman smiles. “And then it was this incredible release for me as a human being to suddenly have free rein of this giant store that has everything. It’s like a kingdom in there.”
Safety remained of paramount importance throughout the shoot, with Hollywood looking to the film as a model of how to make movies on location while Covid remains an ongoing concern. But with the film set in contemporary London, as the city itself struggles through a third national lockdown, our new way of life is baked into the story. So, naturally, Zoom has a starring role.
“Zoom has gotten a bad reputation in terms of storytelling,” Liman claims. “But how human beings communicate has fundamentally changed. I was really interested in how films are going to capture this new reality.” As well as being totally safe, there was an added benefit to the film’s reliance on video chats: with next to no movies in production, Liman had his pick of actors for a raft of famous-face cameos. “The characters who only appear on Zoom all shot in their own homes. And we shot those scenes in real time, across time zones,” Liman explains. “Mindy Kaling is filming herself in her own home. She’s talking to a camera in her closet.”
The result is a fascinating first response to the world we’re all living in now, and inevitably the first of many to come from Hollywood. But for Liman, who has gone back to isolation in his remote farmhouse in the months since filming wrapped, the film also proved a welcome reprieve from lockdown life. “It’s been a very creative time for me,” Liman smiles. “The act of making Locked Down, in a way, that was my escape from being locked down.” JF
‘MAKING THIS MOVIE WAS MY WAY TO ESCAPE FROM BEING LOCKED DOWN’ DOUG LIMAN
ETA | 5 MARCH / LOCKED DOWN OPENS IN CINEMAS NEXT MONTH.