Noomi Rapace
“UNLOCKED” My rating: C
98 minutes | MPAA rating: R
Despite a “name” director and an impressive cast of solid B-listers, the spy drama “Unlocked” feels terribly generic.
Viewers may be forgiven for thinking they’ve seen it all before.
CIA interrogator Alice Racine (Noomi Rapace), on the rebound from a disastrous assignment that led to mass civilian casualties, is now posing as a London social worker, collecting evidence on possible terrorist activities within the Islamic community.
When the agency snatches a courier carrying messages between a radical imam and a terrorist developing a biological bomb, Alice is called in to break the captive’s will and get details on the impending attack.
Except that the CIA dudes running the interrogation seem a bit dicey…in fact, Alice finds herself a pawn in a rogue operation. Marked for death by her own people, she barely escapes and goes on the run.
Among her supposed allies are a CIA bigwig back in the States (John Malkovich) and her agency mentor (Michael Douglas). Unsure who to trust among her own colleagues, Alice turns to a Brit intelligence master (Toni Collette) and at one point teams up with a petty crook (Orlando Bloom) whom she discovers burglarizing an apartment where she has taken refuge.
Peter O’Brien’s screenplay keeps us guessing; almost nobody in this movie is what they first seem.
There is much running around and the bodies pile up, but nothing about “Unlocked” is particularly compelling. Director Michael Apted (whose impressive resume includes “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” “Gorillas in the Mist,” lots of first-rate HBO and Showtime offerings and the brilliant multi-decade “7 Up” documentary series) keeps things moving but never makes us care.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 