Locke

Imagine a movie that takes place in a car and it has a single character whom you watch for the entire hour and a half. I can’t help but be happy with the result, because Tom Hardy delivered a great performance. Steven Knight, in turn, did a great job directing this movie so I was on tenterhooks the entire time, bating my breath and wondering how easy it is to mess up your entire life. (19/12/2014)

Locke comes across as if you were filming, in real time with hidden cameras, the car ride of a man on the telephone dealing with a tricky life situation that could turn his successful professional and personal life upside down in the course of a single night. It is a situation that tests him on the character level, shaped by his difficult childhood, and on the professional level, in maintaining ambition in his responsibility for successfully carrying through an important social cause. It is also as if he is a charismatic man whose emotions and dilemmas you understand and sympathize with. Then all you have to do is edit it down to a smoothly running 85 minutes and you have a gripping study of a superbly played film character. Not everyone will understand that character and not everyone would behave like him, and the film is thus also an interesting test of the viewer’s hierarchy of values. Life can be a dog, but it only takes a few tricks to make an excellent film. If you know how. (24/04/2020)

On a minimum of space, there are quite a lot of emotions, for which, rather than the clumsy script (hysterics on the phone, talking to oneself in the rearview mirror?), the great Tom Hardy is responsible. Then there is also the best advertisement for the BMW multimedia interface in recent years and a few neon lights taken digitally to give it atmosphere. But there is no reason to dwell on it too much. It lacks "substance" and it’s far from solid. (28/06/2015)

The thriller label that Filmbooster and IMBD gave to Locke generates the wrong expectations. I waited pretty long for those family and work phone calls to be interrupted by some extortionist or psychopath who would terrorise the protagonist over the phone. Yet, to my surprise, nobody like that called and the entire film stayed with the work and family calls. But it wasn’t boring even for a second, which must be credited to all interested parties. (02/08/2014)

An excellent solo performance by Tom Hardy, who drives a car for 90 minutes and no one but him appears in the film. His life is falling apart, his mistress is giving birth, his disgraced wife is crying and vomiting, and 218 trucks are supposed to bring him as much concrete in nine hours as is needed for the largest concrete construction in the history of Europe. The dialogues take place on the level of gradually escalating telephone calls and are excellent (on the other hand, Hardy's monologues are slightly stilted and not as interesting). Formally, it's a bit like the film Buried (which entirely takes place in a coffin for a change). Director and screenwriter Steven Knight was able to handle a difficult topic extremely well, and with the small space given to him he played out a fully functional and realistic drama that is a lot of fun the entire time (and has its funny moments). (04/07/2014)