Locke (2014) Review

Director: Steven Knight

Release Date: March 28th, 2014

Cinematographer: Haris Zambarloukos

Starring: Tom Hardy, Olivia Coleman, Ruth Wilson, Andrew Scott

A good film can do so many things to you while watching. A great film can make you completely empathise for the character and draw you into the film’s universe so intensely that you forget you are watching a film. By these criteria, Locke is a masterpiece.

The plot is simple enough. A man, Ivan Locke, learns that Bethan, a woman with whom he had a one-night stand while working away from home, has gone into labour. Locke then gets into his car and travels to London to be with Bethan for the birth of his child, during which time he makes a series of phone calls to his wife (confessing to what he had done), to his colleague (to ensure that the concrete pour runs along smoothly) and to Bethan (for moral support and to comfort her).

One by one, phone call after phone call, Ivan’s life begins to crumble and fall apart – something reflected by his wonderful speech on how, when constructing a building, concrete needs to be solid lest cracks start to develop until the whole thing eventually comes crashing down.

We learn that the reason Locke is so compelled to be at his child’s birth is because he himself had a failure of a father who wasn’t around when he was growing up, and when he did eventually meet him, he was a low-life excuse for a man.

Throughout this film runs the theme of choice and consequence. Action and reaction. Locke made the decision to sleep with Bethan and so she got pregnant. Locke made the decision to travel to the childbirth and so he had to tell his wife about what he had done. Although I had an immense amount of sympathy for him,and he is displayed as a good man in the film, the events that unfold all stem from one mistake he made. One choice. There is, perhaps, a piece of Ivan Locke in all of us – regretting a past decision and having to face the consequences. I believe the film is trying to tell us that it isn’t the mistakes that define us, it’s the way in which we deal with them when the time inevitably comes to do so.

This film hit me hard. I was either crying or on the verge of tears throughout. The plot combined with the subtle, oh-so perfect performance of Tom Hardy finished with some beautiful shots of the M1, had me engaged for the entirety of its short 84 minute run time. Don’t let the short run time put you off, for what this film achieves in its 84 minutes blows so many other films out of the water.

This is definitely one of my favourites from 2014 and by far my favourite of Hardy’s performances of all time.