Locke

(Steven Knight/2013/UK)

I don’t know did Steven Knight lose some drunken bet in the pub one night where he had to draw from a hatful of bizarre film ideas but Locke could definitely have been conjured up in such a scenario. An engineer preparing for one of the biggest concrete pours in the history of construction sites (that may be an exaggeration but it is a fucking huge delivery of concrete by all accounts) gets called away at the last minute and has to drive from London to Wales whilst fielding a barrage of phone calls from the site, his wife and someone in Wales along the way. The entire film takes place in the car in one continuous scene. It sounds mental but it works and Hardy delivers in spades on the demands of such a production. A huge performance, almost as big as the concrete pour, pulls you in and grips you for an hour and a half. His character is a man who's honest, principled and true to is word and that character carries through every narrative speed bump. He not only struggles with pressures from his present conundrum but with psychological pressures from his past.

The finer details of delivering concrete to a site never seemed so important. One of the first things I learned in college was that often the simplest ideas work best: one camera, one actor, one shot – great idea for a short but a brave and gutsy move to commit that to a full length movie. There are cuts and multiple camera angles but it's an entire film  in a car. Uncompromising in its experiment Locke pays off and is well worth a watch. 

(3.5/5)