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Apr 24, 2014 By Zach Hollwedel Web Exclusive

It’s the eve of the biggest night in the career of construction manager Ivan Locke (Tom Hardy). In less than ten hours, he’ll oversee the laying of the foundation for one of the biggest construction projects in England’s history. He’s supposed to spend the big night watching a soccer match at home with his family. Prompted by an unexpected call, Locke instead drives an hour and a half to London. He spends the entire time on the phone – talking alternately to his wife, his kids, and his colleagues – revealing damaging and painful secrets that threaten to upend his entire life. The nearer to London he gets, the farther he’s cast from the life he knows and the people he loves.

Anyone who has ever been on a road trip knows how boring sitting sedentarily for hours can be, which is why — for a movie set entirely inside a car — Locke is an impressive and engaging feat. With only one person (Hardy) ever gracing the screen, the success of the film is attributable most readily to three elements – Hardy’s solid and restrained performance, Steven Knight’s sharp writing, and his inspired direction. Knight skillfully dribbles details of Locke’s life and his mysterious reasons for throwing it all away throughout the first half of the film. By the time we know why Locke’s made the decisions he has, we’ve settled in for the 90-minute drive with him. Whereas the heard-yet-unseen voices that continuously project through his car’s Bluetooth could, under a lesser filmmaker, come off as ethereal and undeveloped, the handful of characters Locke converses with throughout his trip are fully realized, multi-layered people as real and realized characters as Locke himself.

The only major stumbling block, if there is one, is Locke’s repeated and heated conversations with his deceased father, whom Locke speaks to as if a passenger in the vehicle. It’s a goofy gimmick, though a structurally supportive one. Hardy’s skill as an actor helps sell it, and with a single one-screen character in a single location, Knight was obviously limited in what he could do. Still, it remains the weakest link in an otherwise sturdy film.

a24films.com/films/locke/

Author rating: 7/10