The night before the largest project of his career, Ivan Locke, a respected Birmingham construction foreman and a loving husband with two sons, does not go home. He instead drives nonstop to London. He has made a complicated and profound decision: seven months prior, in a rare ethical lapse, he slept with an older woman while traveling, and she is now delivering his child. He will be there for the birth. During the 90-minute drive south, he is on the phone, readying the next morning's events—there are machines to be tested and road closures confirmed—while also arguing for and trying to protect the warm home life now evaporating in his abrupt absence. The title character is the story's only physical presence (his family members and colleagues are represented by their diverse, distraught, frustrated, inquisitive voices) and invites or even demands a major performance capable of riveting the audience without fail. The magnificent Tom Hardy is the right choice then. With his measured, Welsh-accented voice and demonstrative face, he reveals the soul of a previously-in-control man on the verge of despair and destruction whose only option is to combat each emerging crisis with logic and a practical touch. This is the story of a man whose iron sense of moral purpose is bruised, teased, and otherwise upended at every turn by circumstance, memory, and the volatility of the people upon whom he relies even as he hurts them, and Hardy conveys the internal ache in a way both majestic and subtle.

Also deserving of significant praise is writer and director Steven Knight, who made a fantastic directorial debut last year with Redemption (also known as Hummingbird), a dramatic action film far too few people in the United States saw. Here, as a writer, Knight excels at crafting extended conversations which are elegant and revelatory, yet also natural in their flow and at times profane. Where other limited-time-and-space films such as Phone Booth and Buried utilize extreme life-or-death situations to generate suspense, Knight does it through simple, but powerful human drama and a grounded portrayal of contemporary urban anxiety. As a director, he, of course, has limited visual elements with which to populate the frame, but he finds a thousand and one ways to exploit the hypnotic and otherworldly quality of a well-lit roadway at night—a commonplace, yet alien environment of concrete and reflection—while also knowing when to relax his camera and train it directly and without pretense on his most spectacular instrument: Hardy.

A

fuck chicago

Zzzzzz
Didn't like it all that much.

Locke

Another great English film. Tom Hardy gives a pretty solid performance as the mild mannered and ever professional, Ivan Locke. Battling his ancestral impulse and doing the right thing, Locke's life crumbles over the course of an hour. Hardy's Welsh accent is very respectable and constant throughout. Good job on that. Locke is one of those rare films that understands the importance and impact of the viewer's imagination. It respects the viewer. We only see Ivan, which means the rest of the visuals are pieced together by us from what we here on a narrative level and from whose voices we hear. It's not a deep film, however it is a pleasure to be fed these nuggets of information that allow us to study this man and his past mistakes. The thing that hit me the hardest was just how much he will lose from one mistake, and just how important that becomes to him when the loss is imminent (as opposed to how it seemed when he concocted the plan). The film also communicates well the confines of his situation - there is no easy way out, and that is part of the experience, we feel his frustration and regret, but also his willpower to change the course of his lineage.

It is not without flaw; it is needlessly claustrophobic, Hardy's accent is only on-cue when Locke isn't shouting or upset or talking fast (which may be why he's written as this logical and slow-talking man), and it ends abruptly, but Locke is a refreshing delight which has removed any of the hard feelings towards Hardy for his silly performance in The Drop. I've seen all of Hardy's performances since his breakthrough in Bronson and this is by far my favourite. I would go so far to say that if another actor was chosen, the film may not work, and the Welsh accent was needed in order to add gravitas to the character (a London accent wouldn't give the required and instant respectability).

A-

The Welsh accent is one of the few English-language-accents that I still cannot pinpojnt when I hear it.

The Welsh accent is a lovely one to hear, but Hardy's wasn't a powerful/deep one. But he did bloody well to keep it up for, uh, a night or so.

Glad you loved it.

It's quite good at being what it was.

B+

A captivating movie. I was so into this, and loved how the story unfolded from one phone call to the next, peeling of layer by layer more context about the mindset of the main character. I was awake for the whole day on a few hours sleep when I put this on late in the evening. I shouldn't have been able to sit through this, but the suspense of 3 different situations developing in extreme directions for Locke is something I couldn't keep my eyes off. The movie is short and confined to one space, much so like Gravity did, although that was a movie of a much larger undertaking for sure. I wouldn't grade this just as high as that, but it's definitely up there. Hardy is just really brilliant, having also recently seen him in Mad Max, I feel he's really at the top of his game and I'm looking out for his other movies.

A-

**1/2 / ***** (C-)

It's hard to maintain pace in a movie with this kind of concept. Locke kind of manages, but I find the story to be very boring and Locke's problems not really interesting or important. It's a low key movie that you either like or not I guess.