The Locksmith
Directed by Nicholas Harvard
Written by John Glosser, Ben Kabialis; Story by Blair Kroeber
Starring: Ryan Phillippe, Kate Bosworth, Ving Rhames
Runtime: 1 hour 31 minutes
In select theaters and on demand February 3

by Gary M. Kramer, Staff Writer

The Locksmith could have been a gripping character study about an ex-con trying to turn his life around while being tempted to pull off one more job. However, this lackluster B-movie telegraphs its mediocrity from the opening moments. Kevin (George Akram) and Miller Graham (Ryan Phillippe) are about to rob a safe, when Kevin states the obvious. “I got a bad feeling about this.” He’s not wrong. The lousy film he is in has cop Ian Zwick (Jeffrey Nordling) setting the men up, killing Kevin, and sending Miller to jail.

Cut to ten years later: Miller is released from prison and hopes to do whatever he can to make it up to his ex-fiancée, Beth (Kate Bosworth), his daughter, Lindsay (Madeleine Guilbot), and Kevin’s sister, April (Gabriela Quezada). Miller takes a job as a “handyman” for Frank (Ving Rhames) because his locksmithing certificate was revoked when he was incarcerated. Of course, Miller still has those skills; he even teaches Lindsay how to use a tension lever and a pick to undo a lock. 

The drama kicks in when April, the film’s femme fatale, asks Miller to help her get money so that she can leave town. He owes her, they acknowledge; plus, while he will be jeopardizing his parole to go crack a safe or pick a lock, April shows him some bruises that she has received at the hands of Garrett Field (Charlie Weber), a real estate developer whose business is a front for a prostitution ring. 

Miller reluctantly agrees to rob Garrett’s poker party, but things go sideways, natch, and April disappears. Meanwhile, Beth, who is Zwick’s colleague on the force, gets promoted to vice and learns that Zwick and his colleagues, Detective Perez (Noel Gugliemi) and Detective Jones (Bourke Floyd), are dirty cops. She needs to find April too, but Miller can’t help her without compromising himself. 

At this point, the film is pretty much a paint-by-numbers affair. Miller is caught between a rock and hard place who tries to play the ends against the middle. Can he (and Beth) trap Zwick and stay out of jail? And who will end up with the stolen money? Miller makes several promises throughout the film—to stay clean, to care for his daughter, and not to be late to his meetings with his parole officer. (Phillippe should be promising to make better movies). 

There is more tension generated from him keeping his promises than there is during any of the film’s so-called “action” sequences. The robbery that feels perfunctory and two shootouts are downright lazy. The double crosses are predictable. When Lindsay is kidnapped and handcuffed, of course the baddie assigned to watch her steps away for a minute so that she can escape. (That lock-picking scene wasn’t shown for nothing.) The film could have been flintier, or it could have leaned into its badness. Instead, it is just meh.

It is a shame that good actors—Phillippe, Bosworth, and Rhames—are slumming it here. Phillippe hardly seems credible as an ex-con or a locksmith, and the film does not really use his criminal abilities for any real purpose. Bosworth does not fare any better. She figures out the prostitution ring scenario as much from reading the script than her character puzzling it out. Only Rhames as a kind-hearted friend seems to deliver an engaging performance here. The film might have been better if he had played the title character or the villain rather than being saddled with a generic supporting role unworthy of his talents.

The Locksmith is criminal, just not in the right way.