6.3 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
A CIA interrogator is lured into a ruse that puts London at risk of a biological attack.
Starring: Noomi Rapace, Orlando Bloom, Toni Collette, John Malkovich, Michael DouglasThriller | Insignificant |
Action | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English, English SDH, Spanish
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
UV digital copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 1.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
My hunch is had Unlocked not featured a cast with several notable major stars like Noomi Rapace, John Malkovich, Toni Collette and Michael Douglas (all of whom save Rapace have either Academy Award nominations or actual statuettes in their histories), or had it not been directed by the iconic Michael Apted, the man who has famously been able to segue from the Seven Up! documentary franchise to fare at least somewhat more similar to this film like The World Is Not Enough, it might have made more of a splash than it evidently did either in the United Kingdom, where it had a brief theatrical release, or on this side of the pond, where it seemingly will be relegated to the purgatory of cable television. With a cast and director like that, expectations may simply have been raised to a point that this at least occasionally exciting if pretty derivative film couldn't support. Unlocked has a number of undeniably rote elements, but as far as what I’d term Homeland-esque thrillers go, you could do considerably worse. Rapace is on hand as CIA agent Alice Racine, a woman whose interrogation techniques made her a legend in her field until she wasn’t able to successfully crack a terrorist in time to prevent a major attack in Paris, one which resulted in multiple deaths, including several children. In typical thriller fashion, that of course has haunted Alice since, and made her shy away from actual field work, choosing instead to go undercover in a London program designed to help immigrants, where she poses as a social worker and secretly keeps an eye on the comings and goings of suspicious folks.
Unlocked is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. The IMDb lists a variety of both Arri and Red cameras, and the results here are smooth, sleek and typically highly detailed, though I have to say for a thriller the entire visual aesthetic of the film is actually a bit on the drab and ordinary side. One of the refreshing things is a relative lack of grading, and so the palette looks natural, if only rarely what I'd call vivid. Apted goes for some extreme close-ups, including some looks at injuries on the renditioned suspect as well as the terrorist incident in Paris, and detail levels may be squirm inducing for some in these moments. This is what I'd probably term a competent, workmanlike presentation that has no real issues but which doesn't really offer much "wow" factor, either.
Unlocked features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix which, like its video component, offers a completely competent but but only occasionally really impressive mix. Both score and quite a few ambient environmental effects offer intermittent engagement of the surround channels, and things do perk up considerably in some of the skirmishes, where everything from gunfire to hand to hand combat offers good utilization of sound effects. Dialogue is also rendered cleanly and clearly on this problem free track.
As Unlocked came to its close, I actually thought to myself, "Well, that was better than I expected it to be," which is perhaps an assessment that's the inverse of the expectation situation I described above. I guess perhaps because I've had to review so many similar terrorist themed films (and television series) over the past few years, I may have become more tolerant (as horrifying as that now sounds to me), but I actually found Unlocked to be relatively engaging, and fast moving enough that I was willing to overlook its manifest shortcomings. Fans of the cast or even the director may well want to check this out, and for them technical merits are perfectly fine if not really inspiring.
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