“I just want to know that when the sun comes up, I can turn around and drive home.”

Steven Spielberg’s reaction to Locke is pretty much the same reaction anyone who enjoys the film will have after seeing it; he immediately asked Tom Hardy “How did you do that?”

By “that” , Spielberg means: how did you just drive around in a car for 85 minutes and keep me enthralled the whole time? This is a premise that seemed borderline impossible before seeing Locke, which makes the film’s achievements a groundbreaking movie experience. All of the credit here goes to Hardy, who’s acting skills can now be lauded as genius, because I can’t think of many other actors who could have pulled off this performance.

Not to say that Steven Knight’s directing is bad, it just mimics a car commercial a little too closely at times, with balls of light reflecting off of a windshield and Hardy’s face obscured for a majority of the films transitory scenes. When stacked against the beautiful driving scenes filmed by Jonathan Glazer in Under The Skin, Locke’s direction and cinematography feels a bit lackluster at times, if not slightly distracting.

If you still aren’t sold on the prospect of watching Tom Hardy drive a BMW for an hour and a half, then you still won’t be 10 minutes into the movie. The film literally starts with Hardy getting into his car and starting to drive, and a creeping thought of “oh god what did I just sign up for” will start to nag at you. But then something incredible happens, Hardy pulls you into this story that is told entirely through phone calls he is making and receiving. All of those apprehensions dissolve and Locke becomes an intriguing journey just like any other great film, albeit, a slightly more literal one.

Hardy plays Ivan Locke, a man who is heralded during one phone call as “The best englishman there is”. He is a bastard born man who took life into his own hands, and through a precise implementation of practicality made something of himself. He is the best at what he does, he is an amazing father, and a dedicated husband. Well he was all of those things anyway. The film makes the ambitious choice to show you Ivan Locke after he has already made the decision that the plot centers on, instead of playing out those events as a sort of cliche morality tale, Locke has chosen, and the film is a result of that choice.

Ivan Locke is a concrete man, literally and figuratively. He works as a project director on some of the largest concrete pours ever done, a job that turns out to be way more stressful than it sounds. This is brave choice by Knight, who also penned the script. To have Ivan Locke work in an industry as boring as concrete would seem like a misstep, but it proves to offer some of the more fascinating moments of the story. It also works brilliantly as a metaphor to Locke’s situation, as he describes his life perfectly to his subordinate Donal: “cracks begin to form, and cracks turn into larger cracks, and then the foundation slides a fraction of an inch, and then the whole god damn building comes down.”

I won’t give away why Ivan Locke is driving, other reviewers have given this information out, but I feel that a huge tension was created by not knowing why he was doing this in the first place. There are some moments before the reveal that are better visited in hindsight of knowing Locke’s predicament. I will say this though, the plot induces stress and anxiety on a level I have never experienced before in a film. Hardy demands empathy so strongly that as a viewer you begin to shoulder the stress for him. This is something that can only have been achieved by a great actor. Locke is a masterclass in acting, that solidifies Hardy’s place among the greats.

All while driving a car and talking on his phone.

8/10

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