Unlocked

Look at that cast list again. Noomi Rapace, Michael Douglas, John Malkovich, Toni Collette, and a very tattooed Orlando Bloom. On paper, that’s not just a movie; that’s a prestige event that should have commanded a three-thousand-screen rollout and a splashy premiere at Leicester Square. Instead, Unlocked feels like a secret the CIA actually managed to keep. Released in 2017—the same year Charlize Theron was busting kneecaps in Atomic Blonde and Keanu Reeves was perfecting the "gun-fu" of John Wick: Chapter 2—this film arrived like a polite, mid-budget ghost. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a high-end airport novel you buy because the cover has shiny embossed letters, only to realize you’ve read this exact plot six times before.

I watched this on a rainy Tuesday while trying to fix a stubborn leak in my kitchen sink, and honestly, the rhythmic dripping of the faucet provided a more consistent tempo than the first act. Yet, there is something strangely comforting about a "meat and potatoes" spy thriller that knows exactly where the tropes are buried.

The Prestige Paradox

The most fascinating thing about Unlocked isn’t the plot—which involves a biological attack on London and a "mole" inside the agency—but the sheer density of talent on screen. Noomi Rapace (the original The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) plays Alice Racine with a grounded, physical intensity that suggests she’s in a much grittier movie. She’s an interrogator who "failed" a previous assignment, living a quiet life of penance until the call comes. Rapace is fantastic, but she’s often left carrying the weight of a script that feels like it was written by an AI programmed exclusively on 24-hour marathons of Spooks or Homeland.

Then you have the heavyweights. Michael Douglas shows up as the mentor figure, John Malkovich plays the grumpy CIA chief with his signature "I’m-too-smart-for-this-room" energy, and Toni Collette sports a blonde pixie cut and a stiff upper lip as the head of MI5. It is genuinely wild to see these people in a movie that feels so... anonymous. Orlando Bloom arrives midway through as a rogue soldier/burglar with a heavy cockney accent and enough ink to fill a comic book. I actually found his performance quite fun—it’s the most "acting" I’ve seen him do in years—but he feels like he wandered in from a different, slightly more energetic Guy Ritchie flick.

A Master’s Final Bow

There’s a bittersweet layer to Unlocked if you’re a film nerd like me. This was the final narrative feature directed by Michael Apted, the man who gave us the legendary Up documentary series and the Bond entry The World Is Not Enough. Apted was a craftsman of the old school. He doesn't go in for the "shaky-cam" chaos that ruined so many 2010s action movies. The geography of the action is always clear. When a shootout happens in a London apartment or a tense exchange occurs in a public park, you know exactly where everyone is.

However, this clarity reveals the film’s biggest hurdle: it feels dated. By 2017, the "ticking clock" bio-terror plot was already gasping for air. In an era of Mission: Impossible – Fallout, we’ve come to expect a certain level of "wow" factor. Unlocked delivers "okay" factor. The action choreography is functional but rarely inventive. Watching Noomi Rapace fight a dog is probably the most memorable sequence, mostly because it’s just so weirdly specific compared to the generic gunfights elsewhere.

The Mid-Budget Vanishing Act

Why did this movie disappear? It’s a classic victim of the "streaming pivot." In 2017, studios were realizing that unless your movie had a superhero or a talking animal, people weren't going to the theater for it. Unlocked represents that dying breed of the "adult thriller" that used to be a staple of Friday night cinema but has now been entirely swallowed by Netflix and Amazon Prime.

Interestingly, the script by Peter O'Brien actually featured on the 2008 Black List (the industry's list of most-liked unproduced screenplays). Had this been made in 2009 with this exact cast, it probably would have been a modest box office hit. Released in 2017, it felt like a transmission from a bygone era. Even the tech—the "unlocking" of the title refers to a specific code used by terrorists—feels like it belongs in an episode of Alias.

There’s also the "representation" angle of the era. Alice Racine is a refreshing lead—she isn't a "superheroine" in the Marvel sense; she’s a professional who is clearly traumatized and physically outmatched by larger opponents, relying on her brain and tactical training. It’s a performance that deserved a tighter, more ambitious movie to surround it.

Ultimately, Unlocked is a perfectly watchable, entirely forgettable slice of "Dad Cinema." It’s the kind of movie you find yourself halfway through on a Sunday afternoon and think, "Hey, I like John Malkovich," and then proceed to check your phone for the next twenty minutes. It’s not a disaster—Apted was too good a director for that—but it’s a puzzling artifact of a time when Hollywood still thought you could build a hit just by throwing five Oscar nominees at a standard-issue spy script.

If you’re a fan of Noomi Rapace or just want to see Orlando Bloom try on a new personality for an hour, it’s worth a look. Just don't expect it to stay "unlocked" in your memory for long after the credits roll. It’s a professional, well-acted piece of furniture—it fills the room, but you won't remember the color of the upholstery tomorrow.