Producers: Ara Keshishian, Petr Jakl, Sam Raimi and Zainab Azizi   Director: David Yarovesky   Screenplay: Michael Arlen Ross   Cast: Bill Skarsgård, Anthony Hopkins, Ashley Cartwright, Michael Eklund, Navid Charkhi and Sofia Tesema   Distributor: The Avenue

Grade: C+

One could never accuse Anthony Hopkins of embracing the joys of retirement.  Though approaching ninety, he continues to add to an already huge filmography, often in challenging lead roles like those in “The Two Popes” (2019), “Freud’s Last Session” (2023) and, of course, “The Father” (2020), for which he surprised even himself by winning the Oscar, and sometimes in sharp supporting ones, such as his turns in “Armageddon Time” and “The Son” (both 2022).   

But he’s juxtaposed these with undemanding parts in rubbish like “Transformers: The Last Knight” (2017), Zack Snyder’s “Rebel Moon” (2023-24), in which, unseen, he provided the voice of a robot, and the trashy TV mini-series “Those About to Die” (2024) as the Roman emperor Vespasian.  And of course he did his obligatory Marvel stint in the “Thor” series.

So where does “Locked” belong in his filmography?  Well, it falls into a sort of Twilight Zone middle ground.  David Yarovesky’s claustrophobic English remake of Mariano Cohn’s 2019 Argentinian thriller “4×4” is not bad of its kind.  It’s just that its kind doesn’t amount to much.  As for Hopkins, it’s middle-grade as well.  He literally phones in his performance for the first hour, a disembodied voice on the phone.  He actually shows up for the last half-hour, but shows none of the nuance that marks his better work.  Not that the writing invites him to.

The plot is pretty simple.  Eddie Barrish (Bill Skarsgård) is a hustler who’s never tried to make much of his life—a criminal, but a petty one.  His only emotional commitment is to his daughter Sarah (sweet Ashley Cartwright), who obviously loves him enough to forgive his regular failure to show up for his weekly visits—something his ex-wife (girlfriend?) berates him for over the phone.  The latest time he at least has an excuse: his van is in the shop, and the mechanic (Michael Eklund) and his enforcer (Navid Charkhi) won’t give it to him until he forks over an additional four hundred bucks to cover the repairs.

After being summarily hung up on by everybody he calls to ask for dough, Eddie decides to rob any car he finds unlocked in the seedy neighborhood of the unnamed city whose streets he haunts.  Most parked vehicles are shut up tight, of course—in one he finds a growling dog, to which he gives water and food through the crack in the window—but eventually he locates one unaccountably unlocked in a sparsely occupied lot, a beautiful black Dolus SUV.  He slips in, rifles through the interior, finds nothing of value and tries to leave (without, oddly enough, attempting to drive it off).  But he finds himself locked in, unable to make a passerby (Sofia Tesema) who stops to fix her lipstick in the reflection in the driver’s window, see or hear him.

It doesn’t take long for Eddie to panic, especially after a phone call comes in from the SUV’s owner William (Hopkins), explaining his motive in setting a trap.  William, it will eventually be revealed, has some reason for being angry—not only has the Dolus been repeatedly broken into without the cops’ doing anything, but he lost his daughter in an incident of street crime.  He’s determined to get what he sees as justice in his own way, torturing poor Eddie with heat, cold, and worst of all, loud polka music (including yodeling!).  William intends the brutal treatment to be prolonged: when Eddie injures his arm and leg by trying to shoot his way out of the cab, only to have the bullet ricochet, William, a doctor, bandages him up after he passes out and starts his punishment up again when he awakens.

The script tries to add some depth to the proceedings by salting the conversation between Eddie and William with occasional debates about how killing affects a murderer (Eddie, though proclaiming that he’s street-smart rather than college educated, has read Dostoyevsky) and how the privileged oppress the masses (good old Marx at work).  But mostly “Locked” is an exercise in sadism.  William, who peppers Eddie with snarky insults, also sends electrical shocks to the upholstery when his captive mouths off or employs profanity.  He withholds food and water, so that thirsty Eddie is forced to drink his own urine.  (The other aspect of that is referenced only in terms of odor.) 

And when William is feeling especially nasty, he starts up the SUV and takes Eddie on a wild ride through the city, driving remotely.  At one point, he uses the vehicle to mow down a couple of thugs beating a third man in an alley as Eddie watches in horror.  At another William chases down Sarah as she’s riding her scooter home from school, stopping only inches from the girl, who’s fallen in the street. 

Finally William shows up in person, forces Eddie to tie himself down, and proceeds to drive the SUV into the wilderness, using the brake to crash Eddie’s head into the dash when he’s insolent. His intention is obviously not benign, but Eddie is prepared to resist.

Skarsgård gives a frantic, intense performances as Eddie, made more ferocious as cinematographer Michael Dallatorre’s camera pushes in on his face and emphasizes his sweaty desperation as Tim Williams’ score pounds away.  He also manages to encourage sympathy for the guy. Hopkins rejoices in delivering his dialogue with the sneering tone at which he’s so adept, and brings the malicious sneer itself to bear when he shows up in the last act; it’s basically a one-note turn, but a creepy one. 

And yet as a whole “Locked” is only moderately effective.  There are jolts throughout, to be sure, but too often as paced by Yarovesky and edited by Andrew Buckland and Peter Gvozdas it’s becalmed, the long, repetitive dialogue scenes rather flat.  Since the excitement is only sporadic, too often one’s thoughts turn to how ridiculous the whole setup is.  It’s more handsome to look at than most films of this type—the production design by Grant Armstrong contrasts the SUV’s elegance, inside at out, with the grunge of the cityscape, and Autumn Steed’s costumes are striking—especially Eddie’s pink hoodie.

Despite the considerable talent of the two leads, this is a thriller that lurches along in fits and starts rather than exuding high-octane energy from beginning to end.         

Producers: Catherine Fitzgerald and Orlando Stewart   Director: James Ashcroft   Screenplay: Eli Kent and James Ashcroft   Cast: John Lithgow, Geoffrey Rush, George Henare, Hilary Joyce, Maaka Pohatu, Paolo Rotondo, Ian Mune, Anapela Polataivao, Fiona Collins, Yvette Parsons and Hannah Lynch   Distributor: IFC Films/Shudder   

Grade: C+

Any film that brings together John Lithgow and Geoffrey Rush can’t help but be interesting, and both seem to be having great fun playing off one another in “The Rule of Jenny Pen.”  But sadly, the movie is a psychological thriller that’s unsettling but doesn’t make much sense.     

Director James Ashcroft’s film, like his last “Coming Home in the Dark” (2021), is based on a short story by New Zealand author Owen Marshall and was co-written by Eli Kent.  It’s sort of a gender-reversal version of “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” set at a senior care home called Royal Pine Mews.

Rush’s Stefan Mortensen is a new arrival there, a stern judge who, we see in a prologue, has suffered a stroke while sentencing a child abuser and berating the mother of the victim for letting it happen.  Now confined to a wheelchair, he insists to the staff that he intends to recover and return to his normal life, but their prognosis is not good.

Mortensen is not a terribly likable person; he’s arrogant, sharp-tongued and intolerant of his roommate Tony Garfield (George Henare), a former rugby player whose leg injury left him with a limp.  But he’s not so insensitive as to react with indifference when a fellow resident (Ian Mune), an old fellow who refuses to give up his habit of smoking and drinking simultaneously, accidentally self-immolates on the backyard patio to which Stefan has retreated for some fresh air.

Still, despite his condescending attitude, Stefan might have found the home tolerable but for the presence of Dave Crealy (Lithgow), a long-time resident (and, as the judge will learn from a wall full of photos, a former staff member).  Crealy wears on his left hand Jenny Penn, a bald baby doll from which the eyes have been removed.  Jenny might have originated as a therapy doll for Crealy, but he’s turned her into an instrument of terror that he wields against other residents, forcing them to admit that she rules the place and to perform humiliating obeisance to her.  Poor, submissive Garfield is a constant target.  Stefan will become another—for reasons that Crealy, in a monologue late in the film, suggests.

The mistreatment of the two roommates is hardly the worst thing that their sadistic tormentor is responsible for, however.  He’s actually responsible for the death of Eunice Joyce (Hilary Norris), an elderly woman suffering from dementia whose delusion that her family is coming to take her home he takes advantage of in a particularly awful way.  True, his panic at being discovered in the aftermath indicates that beneath the cruelty he’s riddled with fear, and his desperation to cover his tracks leads to one of the film’s most excited sequences.  But the staff’s indifference to Stefan’s complaints about him, and their genial acceptance of his doll, indicate that he doesn’t have much to worry about.  (So does their absence during his nocturnal ramblings about the place.)  Indeed, the only creature that seems to take much notice is the resident cat Pluto (played by a feline named Marbles).         

In due course the judge proves as ruthless as Crealy in his own way.  Noticing that Crealy’s severely asthmatic, he crafts an opportunity to take advantage of his medical needs.  And in the end he seeks to enlist his reluctant roommate to seek a revenge that’s as ghastly as anything Crealy has done. 

“Jenny Pen” gets no points for plausibility, but in the hands of Ashcroft and his technical team—production designer Zahra Archer Monogue, cinematographer Matt Henley and editor Gretchen Peterson—along with the moody score by John Gibson, it creates a mood of quiet dread that the stars sink their teeth, or dentures, into.  Rush sneers and harrumphs with Dickensian glee, while also eliciting sympathy as the increasingly helpless Mortensen suffers at Crealy’s hand.  And while Lithgow has gleefully played outrageous villains in the past—just think of “Blow Out,” “Cliffhanger” and “Ricochet,” to name a few—he’s never been better at the task than here, exuding menace that periodically breaks out into hysterical floor shows in the commons room.

For all the pleasure one might help in watching Lithgow and Rush chew up the scenery, though, the fact remains that the menu is inferior.  As far as Grand Guignol goes, Davis and Crawford had it better.