Locke: One Man in a Car

Locke premiered at Sundance in January, was released in a few theaters in April, and then disappeared. I heard great things but promptly forgot about it until I saw it was available for viewing on my flight. Now that I've seen it, I insist you seek it out immediately and treat yourself to this extraordinary movie.

It is tricky to describe this movie because it is only 84 minutes long and each second is a revelation. So here's the basic set-up. For the duration of the movie, you will watch one man, Ivan Locke, driving his car down the motorway and talking to various people on his car phone. He has to deal with a business and personal crisis at the same time, and is stuck in his car, having to explain to various people over the telephone how he is going to fix everything and not let them down. I know this doesn't sound particularly compelling, but Locke is played by Tom Hardy, who delivers a simply masterful performance as a man who is desperately trying to stay calm and calm everyone else down while things just spiral out of control. And the people he talks to are voiced by the likes of Olivia Colman, Ruth Wilson, and Andrew Scott, excellent actors who manage to make their presence felt solely through the power of their voices. I could picture them all in my head and the casting is really quite apt for these characters.

I last saw Tom Hardy in The Dark Knight Rises, where his role relied purely on physicality and menace as the villain, Bane. In Locke, his role is all about the character's psychology. In an hour and a half, you become intimately acquainted with who this man was, how the split-second decision to take a right turn is currently changing his life, and who he might become. Additionally he is doing this with a Welsh accent. I'm not sure why the character had to be Welsh, but I suspect it might be because the accent is so soothing and wonderful that you don't mind having to listen to Hardy speak in a car for the entire duration of the movie with no other change in scenery. He manages to make a concrete pour for a construction project seem like the most high-stakes activity in the world, and I was thoroughly mesmerized. I knew Hardy was a good actor, but this performance makes it clear that he is a great one, and I hope he gets more meaty leading roles in the future that continue to showcase his incredible talent.

Locke is one of those low-budget independent movies that always manage to startle me with their ingenuity. It's such a simple concept, and yet the taut script by writer-director Steven Knight is a work of art, a polished gem that manages to convey an entire world of characters and emotions despite the fact that you are only in a car with one man for the entirety of the film. The cinematography by Haris Zambarloukos is excellent, going in and out of focus on the unrelenting motorway lights and conveying the nightmarish confusion of the events that are taking place. Locke is a reminder that great cinema is driven by plot and performance, and you don't need special effects and millions of dollars to completely blow your audience away.