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It’s not easy to sustain 85 minutes of drama with nothing to show but one man and one car. Yet, writer-director Steven Knight and star Tom Hardy pull it off with “Locke,” an uncommonly intimate dramatic thriller that continuously makes the most with the least. Not only is the production confined to a single character in a single setting, its plot is comprised of relatively mundane events. (In other words, don’t show up expecting bullets.)
Ivan Locke (Hardy) is a Welsh construction-site foreman en route to a London hospital, and the details of his trip are only gradually unveiled. The conflicts, however, are present from the start, as Ivan needs to cancel on both his crew and his family, to devastating effect. All communication is made via Ivan’s GPS dashboard unit, meaning our sole visual link to human struggle is Hardy’s upper half, with which he delivers his best performance to date. All the hulking rage the Brit instilled in characters like Bronson and Bane is contained here, and waiting to erupt with each mounting stressor.
This is all surprisingly invigorating to watch, and Knight repeatedly transcends the inherent traps of his film’s on-the-nose metaphors. It’s tempting to recoil when Ivan talks to the departed dad he resents in a rearview mirror, but the potentially trite element never veers into damning territory, nor do the allegorical natures of Ivan’s literal journey or his demanding job, which centers around the acts of laying foundations, building, and rebuilding.
Typically, films that offer us only one character to follow will either sink (like “Buried” with Ryan Reynolds) or swim (like “All is Lost” with Robert Redford). Count “Locke” among the latter. Unfolding like a one-man theatrical production, but bolstered by Haris Zambarloukos’s multi-reflection cinematography, the film is a must for Hardy fans, and that it so deftly turns the humdrum into the pulse-pounding affords it widespread appeal. Stripped of adornments, this is a working-class nightmare told in first-class fashion.
Locke
R
Three-and-a-half reels out of four
Opens tomorrow at the Ritz East
Recommended Rental
Veronica Mars
PG-13
Available Tuesday
Years after the beloved, sleuth-y series bid adieu to fans, Veronica Mars returns, this time on the big screen thanks to a Kickstarter-funded production. Reprising the most noteworthy role of her career, Kristin Bell is on the case as the eponymous heroine, co-starring with Tina Majorino and Jerry O’Connell. Rob Thomas, who last helmed another film with a TV queen, the Melissa Joan Heart vehicle “Drive Me Crazy,” directs.
Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
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