Going into writer/director Steven Knight’s new drama, Locke, all I knew about it was that the whole movie was nothing more than Tom Hardy driving in a car and taking phone calls. That Tom Hardy talking on the phone in a car was a strong enough pitch to get me excited to see the film regardless has to be seen as a great compliment to the actor. To fill out the details of this story a bit though, Locke sees Hardy playing a man named Ivan Locke, who’s the construction manager of a very large concrete pour that’s going to happen the next morning, and who has to drive out of town and miss the pour because of a mistake that he’s made in his personal life. Those calls he’s taking involve him both trying to minimize the negative effects of his mistake, as well as trying to make sure that the pour, which is going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, still goes off without a hitch, even though he’s not on site. What’s clear is that this is going to be too much for one man to juggle from a phone, but what’s still hanging in the air is exactly just how much of a disaster Locke’s life is going to look like by the time he reaches his destination.
If I was a little vague in filling in the details of the plot, that’s because discovering the specifics of what Locke’s going through, as he’s going through it, is a large part of the experience of watching this movie. Knight plops you right down in the car with Locke without telling you anything about his situation. The first few calls he fields are pretty mundane, and though you hope that they’re going to go somewhere, for a while you’re left kind of wondering whether you find what you’re watching intriguing because of how it’s going to build to something dramatic later, or whether it’s just plain boring. Don’t worry though, because those early conversations do unravel into something larger and more engaging. By the time you get into the second act, Locke is completely engrossing, and it becomes so even though it presents material that doesn’t have world-ending stakes.
Locke’s problems are the sort that will only affect him and those immediately around him, so they should play as being pretty boring to an outside observer, but because the situation is so personal to him, and because you’re locked in the car with him the whole ride without seeing things from any other perspective, his problems start to feel pretty catastrophic to you too. Locke sucks you in with a very small and personal story that’s very minimally told, but it sucks you in nonetheless. It’s kind of a magic trick that this movie doesn’t end up being boring, and equal credit for the trick has to go to both Knight’s screenplay and Hardy’s performance. By the time the film is nearing its climax, the Locke character has been so thoroughly developed, and so thoroughly realized by Hardy, that you understand completely why this situation means so much to him, and you can’t help but put yourself in his place—and that’s how you make a movie engrossing. Through empathy. Locke may be an hour-and-a-half stuck in a car, but it flies by like a breeze.
