Unlocked

After playing “the girl” to Tom Hardy’s leading men in both “The Drop” and “Child 44”, Noomi Rapace landed a role that was more familiar terrain to her previous successes – a strong, kick-ass woman, in this case a former CIA interrogator. In Peter O’Brien’s script, her character Alice Racine is lured back into action when London is put in danger of a biological attack. Racine is working as a social worker in the capital after failing to contain a terrorist attack in Paris five years earlier where she couldn’t unlock a prisoner before he devastated the city. When Rapace joined the project in mid-2016, fellow Swede Mikael Håfström was attached to direct, but he left the project. Famed British director Michael Apted took over, having experience with both the action genre – helming the James Bond vehicle “The World is Not Enough” and strong women characters – directing Sissy Spacek in “Coal Miner’s Daughter” and Sigourney Weaver in “Gorillas in the Mist”. With Apted, a slew of Hollywood names joined the cast as well, including John Malkovich as a CIA Chief, Toni Collette as the Head of MI5 and Michael Douglas as Racine’s mentor. Orlando Bloom was cast as her mysterious sidekick.

“Unlocked” began filming in late 2014 with Prague as a stand-in for London – for budgetary reasons, according to Michael Apted: “We couldn’t afford to shoot in London for more than a few days. We had to shoot it in Prague. But I got a very bright, young Czech production designer who spoke good English, and he said to me, “Look, if you choose your key locations in London, don’t make them historical, because I can’t match those. Make them modern, because I can do modern. There are parts of Prague that look like London.” Apted was content with Rapace, who was already in training for the part when he joined the project. “I felt that if this was going to work, whoever played it would have to be able to do some of the action stuff. You couldn’t have some wonderful actress who you knew instinctively couldn’t knock some bloke on the head. But she can do that. I thought that was a great gift. If we hadn’t had her, I can’t think… there’s only a handful of actresses who I’ve seen be remotely convincing. Not that she did it all – we had to stop her, because she enjoyed doing it. I just needed the sense that she could deliver as that character – that she was strong and courageous and somewhat foolish. That was a crucial ingredient, and that was already a given. If she hadn’t been attached, I think it would’ve been much tougher.

I always wanted to be a female Jason Bourne. It felt a little bit like that. It’s an authentic, real, rough movie where you can actually feel what it’s like to hit the floor. It fucking hurts to scratch your knees. It hurts to get punched. Alice can fight because she trains really hard and she has a lot of rage and a lot of demons in her that make her good at her work. I broke my nose! It was an accident during one of the action scenes. I got Orlando Bloom’s elbow in my face. He was like, “Oh my god! I’m so sorry! I hit her, I hit her!” I heard it crack. I just iced my face and they shaded it with make-up so it looked straight. After the shoot I was like ‘Fuck, my nose looks really bad!’ so I went to a doctor and he said, “You have a fracture and you should have checked this right away but now it’s too late.” (Noomi Rapace, Empire Magazine, June 2017)

Apted also credits bringing Toni Collette on board, with a part originally written for a man. “I liked Toni Collette, because she was originally written as a man. I wanted another woman in the film who could offer comfort to Noomi’s character. So it wasn’t an all-male thing – to have a woman in a position of power. So I delivered Orlando, and the producers delivered Michael [Douglas] and Malkovich. Noomi was there, so that was pretty much it. That’s how it happened. You know, it was very hard on Noomi, because they were never all together at once, and she had to do a solid week with Orlando, and then Malkovich would come in, and she’d have to do her bits in chunks.”

Filming of “Unlocked” wrapped in January 2015 in London, and it took more than two years to get a theatrical release for the film. When it released British theaters on May 05, 2017, critics were favorable on Rapace and critical on the story (and every word that Orlando Bloom uttered in his character’s accent). Variety acknowledged Rapace’s performance, writing that “the original girl with the dragon tattoo is still proving her mettle for the part in far lesser vehicles like “Unlocked” – an anonymously enjoyable espionage thriller that, for purposes of memory, all but self-destructs the second the closing credits begin to roll.”