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THE PENGUIN LESSONS

Producers: Ben Pugh, Rory Aitken, Andy Noble, Adrián Guerra and Robert Walak   Director: Peter Cattaneo   Screenplay: Jeff Pope   Cast: Steve Coogan, Jonathan Pryce, Vivian El Jaber, Björn Gustafsson, Alfonsina Carrocio, David Herrero, Julián Galli Guillén, Aimar Miranda, Nicanor Fernandez, Hugo Fuertes, Joaquín Lopez, Miguel Alejandro Serrano, Ramiro Blas, Florencia Nocetti, Micaela Breque, Romina Cocca, Tomás Pozzi, Juan M. Barreiro and Gera Maleh   Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics

Grade: B-

Penguins have never gone out of fashion as delightful movie fodder: they’ve marched in documentaries and exhibited their happy feet in animated form, and this year they’ve served as buddies to humans in two live-action dramedies based on real stories.  The first was “My Penguin Friend,” with Jean Reno as a man whose grief and gruffness melted under the influence of one.  Now arrives “The Penguin Lessons,” with Steve Coogan as a teacher whose cynicism collapses when reluctantly paired with another.

Adapted, very loosely of course, by Jeff Pope from Tom Michell’s 2016 memoir, “Lessons” stars Steve Coogan as a world-weary, tart-tongued Brit who arrives in Buenos Aires in 1976 to teach English to the pampered sons of the country’s elite at St. George’s College.  It happens that his coming coincides with a military coup in which the hapless President Isabel Perón, third wife of the deceased Juan, is overthrown and replaced by a ruthless junta.

When the school temporarily closed amidst the turmoil, Michell, looking for a good time, travels to Uruguay and links up at a bar with a local woman he hopes to have a one-night stand with.  She ultimately admits she’s married and demurs at his proposal, but during a walk on the beach they come upon a penguin soaked in oil from a spill, and she insists they take it back to his hotel room and clean it off.  She leaves, but the penguin becomes attached to him, and the hotel staff won’t let him leave it behind when he checks out, so he finds himself transporting it, not without some difficulty at customs, back to Buenos Aires and hiding it in his quarters at St. George’s despite the “no pet” policy of rigid headmaster Buckle (Jonathan Pryce).

From this point the movie is about the humanization, or re-humanization, of Michell on two interrelated tracks.  One concentrates; on his relationship with the bird, and the way everyone else reacts when they discover the existence of Juan Salvador, the name he bestows on it after the title character in the Spanish edition of Richard Bach’s 1970 sensation “Jonathan Livingston Seagull.”  His housekeeper Maria (Vivian El Jaber) and her lovely granddaughter Sophia (Alfonsina Carrocio) grow fond of it despite the messes it causes, his bewildered faculty colleague, the Swedish physics prof Michel (Björn Gustafsson) becomes a fan, and even Buckle’s hostility eventually wilts.  They all find Juan easy to share their problems with; he’s a good listener, and never criticizes.

And when Michell introduces Juan to his students, the bird proves a big hit.  Animosity on the part of boys from right-wing homes against the shy classmate from a Peronist one ceases, and the students’ apathy and unruliness decline as their level of achievement increases.

Simultaneously Michell is forced to confront the reality of the ongoing governmental change when left-leaning Sophia is carted off by agents of the new regime as he watches and does nothing.  Wracked with guilt over his inaction, he prods Buckle to use his influence with powerful parents to intervene, and even approaches a sinister security man to help, using Juan as a kind of bait.  He also begins peppering his lessons with pacifist poems, to the distress of the headmaster, who prefers an apolitical stance to protect the school.

The effort to balance the story’s crowd-pleasing, penguin-centered uplift with the background of regime brutality isn’t very successful.  The former might be pretty standard stuff but works well enough; the latter, which reduces a tragedy of major proportions—thousands of citizens disappeared in the years when the junta was in power—to a single, melodramatic case doesn’t come near to doing justice to the reality.  And bringing the two together in the finale, which joins the sadness of loss with a subdued sense of triumph, feels like a cop-out.

What goes far to rescue things is the presence of Coogan, a past master of the sarcastic quip and the mournful deadpan reaction shot, skills he employs to the full here.  And he’s fortunate in having some accomplished foils to play off—the redoubtable Pryce, of course, but also the poignant El Jaber and the gentle, persistently baffled Gustafsson, whose long absence at one point is a genuine loss.  One can’t, of course, ignore Coogan’s interplay with the boys, either; but it’s his scenes with the penguin, played by real birds with only a few instances of VFX or CGI, that will win most viewers over.

Aside from the cast and the penguin handlers, one can credit director Peter Cattaneo (“The Full Monty”) for giving them the room to shine, as well as a technical crew—production designer Isona Rigau, cinematographer Xavi Giménez and editors Robin Peters and Tariq Anwar—who deliver a handsome, unhurried package.  A score by Federico Jusid highlights the perky moments as well as the melancholy ones.

No classic, perhaps, but fans of Coogan—and of penguins—will find enough in this warmhearted if uneven parable of redemption to enjoy.

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LOCKED

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.