Ivan Locke (Tom Hardy) is a devoted family man, taking pride at being the best he can be at home and dedicating his life to being the top of his game in the construction world. However, due to one simply phone call his whole world is about to come crashing down around him. On the eve of the biggest challenge of his professional career he receives the news that the women he stupidly slept with one drunken night is about to give birth to their child. Being a man of conscious he speeds off to support this women in her hour of need…
This is the point where the audience come in, for the next hour and 20 minutes we witness a one man show (well we do hear the voices of the other characters). The whole film is based inside a car with Locke taking phone call after phone call from not only his emotional one night stand in a hospital bed, but his irate boss, a scared fellow colleague, his over excited kids and his wife. With each call his life drowns deeper and deeper into turmoil as his infidelity unravels and effects every part of what was good about his life. It’s like the man never stops to have a breather.
Writer and Director Steven Knight, in his own words, has tried to do something daring and rather different with this film but I wasn’t quite convinced he pulled it off. Setting a “drama” at night (which adds greatly to the whole ambience of the film), in a car with just one man to watch throughout isn’t that compelling. Yes it was slightly intriguing to witness this man have a bit of a meltdown. The fact they worked into the storyline that he was fighting the ghost of his dead Father to be a better man than him gave us a little insight into this Locke’s brain there wasn’t enough scope for this to be played out as well as it could have been.
However, Knight casting the ever popular Hardy in the lead role will no doubt pull in the crowd just because people want to see what his next move is. If you’re expecting Batman’s Bane you’re going to be sorely disappointed. Hardy’s portrayal of Locke is quite genius (even though I wasn’t convinced of his Welsh accent). Donning a face full of hair, he goes from a cool, calm man of stone, throwing in a bit of a temper for good measure here and there, to a bit of an emotional mess as he fights with himself between the right and wrong thing to do, all in my eyes extremely convincingly and there are moments you feel a certain connection with this character but that soon disappears. To be fair no matter how much love I have for Tom Hardy, I’ve seen him in better.
All in all I wasn’t bored, the whole concept of this film says you should be but there is just something about it that kept me interested, suspenseful , yes, very close to our real life problems, again yes it was but there is something missing which I can’t quite put my finger on. I didn’t love it but then again I didn’t hate it either, I was left feeling rather indifferent. It’s certainly not for everyone and if you want a bit of action you need to stay well clear.
LOCKE IS OUT IN CINEMAS ON 18th APRIL