VOD: Unlocked (dir: Tae-joon Kim, 2023)

"As far as I know, he repairs smartphones."

This unsettling Korean thriller tells the contemporary cautionary tale of a young woman who lives her life through her smartphone and one night leaves it on the nightbus during a heavy night out, only for a stranger to pick it up and use it to completely unravel her entire life, from assuming the online identities of her friends to destructive effect to mapping out every aspect of her life and insinuating himself into her world.  Led by an engaging performance from Woo-hee Chun as the victim and a carefully-controlled portrayal of the coolly psychopathic tormentor from Si-wan Yim, Unlocked is a very deliberate and low-key film that makes the loss of control feel rather sinister.  It uses the technology on-screen to good effect and ramps up the tension in the second half effectively, offering a sobering warning about our reliance on our phones today.
 

FILM: Unlocked (dir: Michael Apted, 2017)

"Clean work."

Unlocked feels like a thriller from the early 2000s, with more than a hint of Bourne, the London-set scenes from the last couple of Bond films and a hefty dose of Spooks.  From its opening shot, most of the film is set in very-familiar central-London-tourist locations which do look good on the screen.  Noomi Rapace leads the movie strongly as ex-CIA interrogator brought back into the fold to 'unlock' a terrorist biological threat against Americans in London, with reliable support from Michael Douglas and John Malkovich, plus Orlando Bloom seemingly auditioning for Eastenders, Toni Collette doing her frosty Brit turn and the director running a Paul Greengrass tribute session. There are some sharp (and sudden) action sequences and enough twists and turns to keep attention, some very blunt and sometimes muddled messages about immigrants, but overall this is a reasonable if familiar thriller that feels confident enough to suggest ongoing adventures at the end.