“Locke” is a one-man film who is in for a long car ride. Its only character that is seen throughout the entire movie is Ivan Locke (Tom Hardy). Every other character is only heard by the speakerphone in his BMW. The concept of “Locke” seems to gear towards forgiveness, since all of these problems are trying to be discussed and resolved by phone, or it could be director Steven Knight’s perception of discussions that seem cinematic, yet striking.

Ivan Locke is a family man and a construction manager. As soon as his shift ends, his boys call him to make it home for one of the biggest football games of the year, however, Ivan receives a phone call that is one of the biggest challenges of his career and sets a variety of conflicts that he struggles to resolve. Instead of dealing with the people verbally, he decides to go on a long drive to fix another situation but also deal with the rest of the other problems that is putting his life at stake. 

“Locke” is one of those last minute films. The film was shot in six days and all of the voices of the people that Hardy’s character speaks to was recorded in hotel rooms separately. 

In the film Hardy’s character has a cold and that was actually not intended but was added into the script. This happened because during the production, Hardy had a cold, but being on a tight schedule they just included his character being sick. Knight’s objective to include Hardy’s real-life cold sets the film to even be more suspenseful, because with all of the stress that Hardy’s character already has on himself, this just takes the cake for it being a bad day for him.

With this film, the technical element that grasped my attention was the oblique angles of the car and Hardy’s face when it was in frustration. In those moments, the colors faded and it is cinematic because it immerses viewers to feel like they are part of “Locke’s” life.

When Knight directed “Eastern Promises” that film was violent and contained tons of vulgar language, but was a masterpiece. Normally his films consist with violence to make entertaining. “Locke” is just as entertaining. Not with violence, but with aggravation and guilt that Hardy plays perfectly.

Four stars.