Locke

A road movie with a depressing aftertaste. Hardy and his BMW never leave the screen and just watching the suffering in the face of the former is worth it. A self-confident person slips slowly into being a mental wreck, but you don’t find out if he goes over the edge until the end. One mistake, one road, one bad day. Donald, don’t trust God when it comes to concrete! (08/04/2014)

Outside of Locke, Steven Knight was the writer and director behind the ambitious but somewhat sympathetically infantile Hummingbird, starring Jason Statham, whose central motif was once again man, his principles, ineffable cyclicality, and the surrounding world, which is the enemy. The screenplay for Locke is basically brilliant, and I'll give a nipple for the fact that it was written in the introduction that film databases of the world would call the genre a thriller, of which it has some of the parameters (the action takes place almost in real time, a protagonist removed from his environment, dealing with hostility all around), but otherwise it's a pure drama about how a basically systematic protagonist decides to take an unexpected step and pragmatically carries it out according to his principles and procedures. It's terribly easy to keep a relative distance from Locke thanks to its ambition and an ending that few will probably find satisfying, except that you sort of have to admit that this is a genuinely bold move from director Steven Knight, comparable to the central character's struggle for his perceived soul. (09/22/2014)

Hardy just needs to be placed in a car, given a quality script, and he will conjure up a minimalist acting concert for you through phone calls that will slowly wrap you around his finger. Ivan Locke loses everything he has built during a single - not even two-hour - drive (literally). I enjoyed slowly figuring out what kind of person Ivan really is. Although I found him quite likable - especially through phone calls where he discussed matters related to the upcoming massive construction project involving concrete pouring - I rather empathized with the people in his closest circle (wife, children, "mistress") whom he manipulated without fully realizing that he was doing many things wrong. Instead, he lied to himself, convincing himself that he had only made one mistake, and even for noble reasons. But the world is not black and white, and his character is too complex to unequivocally say whether he is a good or bad person. And that's why Locke feels so real and convincing. (06/18/2018)

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. (06/28/2015)

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). (07/04/2014)