Unlocked (15)

AT first glance, Unlocked is an action thriller with its finger on the pulse of the front pages, namely Islamist terrorism. But don’t be deceived. Like last year’s Idris Elbe vehicle Bastille Day, the theme is simply topical dressing, and its pleasures much more generic. If there’s anything to take from the new film, beyond moderately satisfying popcorn entertainment, it’s the introduction of a character many have been crying out to see – a credible female spy.

Alice Racine (Noomi Rapace) is a CIA agent based in London, where she’s working undercover in a community centre in a multi-racial neighbourhood, on the off-chance of discovering terrorist cells. A skilled interrogator, Alice is bored and restless. But the soft posting is self-imposed, for she still hasn’t forgiven herself for failing to prevent a terrorist attack in Paris a few years previously, where more than 20 people were killed.

When the CIA apprehend a genuine terrorist suspect, who they believe is about to instigate a biological attack, they insist that Alice put her self-pity to one side and take charge of the interrogation. Yet there’s a traitor in their midst, whose sleight of hand means that Alice is not sure who she’s working for. In tried and tested fashion, she goes rogue until she can work out who she can trust.

The film’s experienced and versatile director, Michael Apted, has one of the Pierce Brosnan Bond adventures under his belt: The World Is Not Enough. But in the modesty of its budget and more serious tone, this is more akin to his Second World War spy movie, Enigma. The action is set wholly in London, moving with an air of verisimilitude between council estates and hotels, townhouses and high-rises, with very little of the glossy and frenetic camerawork that is so tediously de rigueur in today’s action movies; its climactic set-piece at Wembley Stadium is positively low-key.

The result is a decent sense of milieu accompanied by a focus on character. The single weakness in the cast is Rapace’s ostensible co-star Orlando Bloom, who doesn’t work at all as a former soldier who breezes into Alice’s path and offers to help her; the actor has never seemed comfortable away from Lord Of The Rings and Pirates Of The Caribbean, and he’s all at sea as a quipping tough guy.

Thankfully, his failings are compensated by a trio of good-value cameos from reliable old hands: Michael Douglas as Alice’s former boss and mentor, John Malkovich as her new chief and Toni Collette as his MI5 counterpart – the latter pair injecting some good-natured humour into the mix.

At the centre, Rapace has her best role since her breakthrough as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Lisbeth Salander. Alice is smart, resilient and very handy – her transformation from interrogator to guns-blazing agent generates a very satisfying frisson. But she’s nothing like, say, Angelina Jolie’s agent in Salt, who was a machine-like clone of however many male action heroes; Alice hurts, bleeds, and at one point develops a very impressive yellow bruise. More to the point, the Swedish actress has both an authentic softness (seen in Alice’s relationship with a local lad she’s turned into an informer) and an authentic edge.

Around her, the film suffers from hackneyed dialogue and some daft, almost incomprehensible plotting. Yet a sharp epilogue (the one time the story leaves London) is a clear nod to a possible follow-up and the chance to improve. We may never get a female Bond, but we won’t need one if there’s a future for Rapace’s Alice Racine.

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Julian Barratt from comedy duo The Mighty Boosh stars in this comic adventure as a has-been actor, whose one claim to fame was as a TV detective, Mindhorn, in the 1980s. The actor has fallen on hard times, when a serial killer who is terrorising the Isle of Man – and who believes that Mindhorn is a real person – insists he will negotiate only with the detective. The old thesp leaps back into action.

Sleepless (15)

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